Sabah Carrim (Western Voices 2023)

Bio: Sabah Carrim has authored two novels, and her shorter work has been selected in a variety of international competitions such as Bristol Short Story Prize, Not-So-Normal-Narrators Contest, Gabriele Rico Challenge for Creative Nonfiction, Afritondo Short Story Prize, and the Small Islands Anthology Contest. She has a PhD in Genocide Studies, and was awarded the W. Morgan and Lou Claire Rose Fellowship for a MFA in Creative Writing at Texas State University.

 

What a Camera Does

 

It redefines what’s seen

& renders more intriguing

the subject, the object & the scene

 

It gives the market new meaning

eroticised now, eroticised then

“A place,” Daddy would say,

“for when you’re older."

(no longer prey to men

& their power)

 

It makes you sift through

the noise, the fluff

in search of intersections

of the one thing that stands out

from everything you've seen

 

It makes the object ask:

"Why me? Where do you come from?"

& tell you which parts of the world

her children & grandchildren now live;

that what she sells is only organic

—pena solisyon

 

It makes you want to capture

the sudden memory of the old man

who sold syrupy coconut in dough

& recall how it was a lesson in patience

waiting for the first taste of hope

& look upon the young man selling macatia

as a representation, a trope

 

It makes people around the object

wonder, “What’s about him that—”

& he, to respond:

“There’s a museum in London

called Madame Tussauds

where you find Shah Rukh Khan

& Amitabh Bacchan & where soon

enough, I will show."

 

It makes you wonder how

objects would react

if you hadn't been this

if you hadn't been you

if you hadn’t gone away

& come to be this way

 

& as you ignore the times you’re noticed

you’re aware of the little voice in your head

remind you of the other one in the cynic’s:

“Who’s the local, the Mauritian

taking photos of people, things & scenes

she appears to have never ever seen."

***

My Philosophy Interlocutor

There’s a phone call:

 

an interlocutor on philosophy

from

the West

 

We discuss

Nietzsche and Sartre

Salgado and Buniatishvili

 

solemn and dignified

 

But I’m more focused on

what he hears:

 

clicking sounds of three geckos

fighting, mating

 

my parents reading prayer aloud

 

father screaming my name

to come and eat

 

mother barging into the room

with a plate of food

 

loud TV

 

the neighbour’s baby’s wails

the chatter of the rats outside

the car engine’s groans in the garage

the creaking of doors

water gushing out of the pump

 

so much noise

 

I hear what he hears

(thank god he doesn’t

see what I see)

 

I concoct excuses

to feel better:

africa

mauritius

islam

india

middle class

 

My parents always said

not to have complexes

about who I am.

They make

                      so much sense

 

                                                        right?

  

Next time I’ll discuss

                                      philosophy

when they’re

                      fast asleep

***

Mozart’s Café in Austin, TX

Which part of India is she from?

What is she doing here?

This top she’s wearing is interesting.

The shoes too. It all goes well together.

Although the scarf doesn’t really match.

Where did she buy it?

From India? From here?

It does look Indian.

Is she married? How old is she?

She looks my age.

What’s her story?

Does she have children?

Why is she with this boy?

He is not Indian.

Why is she hanging out with him?

Are they dating?

Why is she dating him?

Why is he wearing this hat?

Isn’t it making him feel hot?

It looks itchy.

And those leggings, why are they so colourful?

How strange, only girls wear those.

Is this how they dress in America?

My god, the things that go on in this place.

How did they meet? Where did they meet?

Maybe at university. Maybe in class.

Oh no, she noticed me looking at her.

Now the boy is also looking at me.

Oh no. Let me pretend I was looking at the person behind them.

OK, they’ve stopped looking at me.

Why is he wearing earrings?

Boys don’t wear earrings. Cheeh!

What is she typing on her laptop?

Assignments? Or something else?

What is he drawing?

Is what she is doing connected to what he is doing?

She must be a student here in UT.

Why is she looking at me?

What is there to look at me for?

How did they come here?

Do they come here every day?

Did they drive? Take an Uber?

I wish I could stop staring at them for so long.

But I can’t.

Do they live together?

I wonder if they are sleeping together.

How long are they going to be here?

It’s already 2:30. I need to pick up Arun and Rohit.

I also need to drop by at the shop and get curry leaves

And some garam masala.

***

---

Western Voices 2023 :: Setu, February 2023

Sabah Carrim (Western Voices 2022)

Bio: Sabah Carrim has authored two novels, Humeirah and Semi-Apes, both set in Mauritius where she was born. Her stories have been shortlisted in various international competitions such as the Bristol Short Story Prize, AfroYoung Adult Competition, Not-So-Normal-Narrators Contest, Gabriele Rico Challenge for Creative Nonfiction and the Afritondo Short Story Prize. She has lived, studied and worked in Malaysia for 15 years and holds a PhD in Genocide Studies with a focus on the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. Sabah is currently recipient of the W. Morgan and Lou Claire Rose Fellowship for a MFA in Creative Writing in Texas State University.

Noises of death

The peeling, the clanking

of onions and dishes

from the kitchen

across the door

Noises that don't make sense

 

Noises of death

These movements that work

towards a process

Ingesting, digesting, egesting

Starting all over again

 

Noises of death

This peeling, clanking

regardless of us

sitting together, recognising death

 

We too were once

chunks of a process

Alive, so alive, and now so dead

***

Ad Nauseam

sharing stories, telling Our Story

No, retelling it in similar ways

adding the everyday;

opening up, censoring

choosing this time around to be strategic

for aren’t we cursed

with the faculty of remembering

 

slaves to thoughts, reactions

associations

the voice within

whimsical in both: loving more, loving less;

loving, and not-loving

 

Rubbing off each other

adopting new imprints, facial expressions,

gestures, habits, and mannerisms;

not to forget colloquialisms,

interjections, and figures of speech;

A reminder that we’re really just mimics.

 

We end on a common note: We learned

We grew

We’ll grow to be careful

Tfeh. Those clichés

 

Will we?

 

Or did

we use, were used;

hurt, were hurt

 

For one always knows it sooner than the other

 

And if we learned, shouldn’t we always thank the teacher?

 

Memories, even the good, now wrapped—suffocating—

in a cling film

of pain

 

We’re vulnerable—we’ll make the

same mistake

 

in the end

 

We

the imprints of facial expressions,

gestures, and mannerisms, colloquialisms,

interjections, and figures of speech; the totality

of those who rubbed off on us;

joined the path for a month or two

or even longer

 

and still

said Goodbye

Adieu

but more obviously: Sorry

 

like they—we—all do

(the sole thing we really learned)

***

Mother 

& when you sat in that hospital bed with curtains shielding your shame, coarse staples crossing skin, dug in-to you—now a space of butchery—& I stood watching the nurse plucking them out one by one, de-thorning you; you hissing, annoying the rest of the ward, I wondered whether you realised how life would change after this; you blaming science & us for the evil befallen upon you, buying into conspiracy theories; a government ploy, you said, to get rid of you; denouncing us for what we did, forcing you to sign consent forms of the informed, just to save you from you. I wondered whether you realised that day, how living without a breast would make you feel lesser; that the presence of a doctor wouldn’t mean he’d restitute you to you; that you’d come out of this scarred, & start hiding from me, your daughter, rushing to cover yourself when I’d walk in on you. I wonder whether I realised then that you’d slowly disintegrate, be a space of butchery where we’d be coarse staples, desperate to hold you & parts of you in one piece.

 

---

Setu, April 2022

Sabah Carrim: Poetry (Western Voices 2021)

Bio: Sabah Carrim has authored two novels, Humeirah and Semi-Apes, both set in Mauritius where she was born.

Her short stories have been shortlisted in various international competitions such as the Bristol Short Story Prize, AfroYoung Adult Competition, Not-So-Normal-Narrators Contest, Small Islands Anthology Contest, and the Gabriele Rico Challenge for Creative Nonfiction.

She’s also an academic with a PhD in Genocide Studies, and is currently recipient of the W. Morgan and Lou Claire Rose Scholarship in Texas State University for a MFA in Creative Writing in the United States of America.

 

Musings

 

The mirror doesn’t show much of a

difference—although there is one, a silent decay

 

like meat that’s stood on the kitchen counter for days—meat

that’s dehydrated

 

that’s how we appear as we age.

 

Everyone interesting and passionate, and most importantly      alive

is henceforth ten years younger—or more

 

and you wonder where your contemporaries are.

 

They’re in their homes, washing dishes, cleaning

the mess of their children and their

partners, soaking whole grained oat meal

for breakfast on the morrow

 

They’re doing the accounts, counting the number of months

before the loan’s paid, so they can figure out when it’s

safe to get a new one

to secure them in their old age

 

They’re going to bed early, setting their alarms to wake up

on time

to swallow their oat meal and beat the traffic jam

 

while you’re sitting here, looking in the mirror, looking

at the distant sea

and the distant horizon, pondering on these

eternal wheels we’re caught up in

 

pondering on these dreary and boring lives you’ve avoided

that always seemed both—attractive and repulsive

 

Have you ever engaged in conversation with the sea?

 

Have you heard it roar and lash out at you in anger

especially in the middle of the night

as if

the sun it had swallowed

was rebelling from within its stomach

(it seems because the lights went out)

 

Have you heard the sea roar and lash out at you

with the crescented moon just atop

and a few stars dotting the side

all peeking through the leaves of a coconut tree

and staring at you

 

Have you had to soothe the sea with your words

and watched and heard it tone down

and felt consoled that an unruly child could be calmed by you

 

Have you ever had to play music to the sea

and synchronised its rhythm and beat to the

ebb and flow of the splashes on the shore

 

and as you turned to go back to your room

heard its complaints its lamentations all too soon

 

Broken Things

 

At certain junctures of our lives

 

after the analysis, after the diagnosis

 

of the problem

arises the need to gather courage

 

to undo things that aren’t right

to do things that have to be set right

to unplug oneself from a broken system

to revert, recede, restitute

to do to act

 

to stop thinking that     it could have been worse

when    it could have been better

 

—but people usually falter at this stage

 

one would think that everyone has a threshold for the pain

they can endure—but no,

 

ultimately most of us

                                                            end up

living

              with

 

                      broken things

---

Western Voices 2021 :: Setu, February 2021