Tag: liberation

Thy Will Be Done

Yvet Youssef
(Ink + edit, November 2024)

I’ve been thinking about willpower a lot lately. The power to will something into being. We witness megalomaniacal men ‘will’ their vision into being. Their violent monstrous imagination made manifest. Thousands of people die, because some motherfucker wanted it so. The whole world tilts on the axis of audacity of those who will themselves into prominence. And, conversely, the insecurity of those who feel like they are powerless.

And I’m sitting here, all thoughtful, worrying if my tiny words might offend someone. “I just didn’t want to be rude…”¹ I’m the person who will sit by the windowseat on a plane having to pee, but not wanting to disturb my sleeping neighbor. So I will not pee. You see what I mean? I WILL stay uncomfortable and unheard to protect the assumed tranquility of the other. My nervous system has learned that’s the safe route. You might recognize this behavior in relationships, and how detrimental it is in the long run.

Now it’s easy to think: I am a good person for taking others into account. He is a bad person for not taking anyone into account. But these are two sides of the same coin. Self-aggrandizing and self-denial aren’t virtuous. Both of these are behavioral patterns that stem from the trauma of not being truly seen as a child. Trying to extract crumbs of love and acknowledgement through controlling the environment, either with brute force, or through silent scheming. Over-adaptation to the needs and whims of others, as well as a complete incapacity to register the experience of others, is indicative of unhealed wounding in our psyche. And many of us struggle with this.

I look at the state of our world and don’t know how to solve this immediately. It often feels overwhelming. But I can logically infer that if wounding stems from not being truly seen when we needed it, our collective medicine might have something to do with truly seeing one another now². I want to be entirely present when you share your experience of reality, and I want to be totally open to share mine with you, in equal measure. When all performative niceness and performative aloofness fall away, we are left in the center of presence. And that’s vulnerable. It’s liberating. It’s loving.

I look at the megalomaniacal men force-feeding their will to us be-will-dered spectators. But we don’t really want what they have to offer. And I wonder: Where did they find the audacity? I want some of that audacity. So I spit the spoon-fed formula out of my mouth. This doesn’t nourish me at all. And I search for my own will. One that is neither reckless nor self-effacing. My true will is always communal, interdependent. Always a shared abundance. And the commune includes me and everyone else; it’s planetary. Let us see each other, truly. Let us will a reality into being that benefits life for everyone.

¹ reference to the song: I Was Gonna Fight Fascism by Soccer96 and Alabaster DePlume. It’s painfully relevant these days. Give it a listen.

² this is what I offer the collective through Clarity Sessions – a container in which you can be truly seen and witnessed in your experience of reality. If this sounds like something that might benefit you right now, I have spaces available, just send me a message.

Reconsider: Absolutely. Everything.

Yvet Youssef

This piece was last edited in the fall of 2022, nestled somewhere in the hundreds of pinned notes on my phone. I have pinned so many notes the pinning has lost all functionality. I found this by accident, and I thought: yep, I sound like a pirate sometimes, but, still feeling this. There was just one gap in the flow which I stitched together with a line about the reason for these words hiding in the digital dungeon of forgotten notes for so long…

Everything is bullshit to me
It’s like I’m half-plugged in and the screen is glitching so much I can’t immerse myself in the story

I read articles and advertisements from yet another person thinking they can beat the system by selling me a subscription to their 5 week self-help affirmation-station-program and I want to scream
And I do
I say OHFUCKOFF to the screen
Nobody needs that!
Nobody

It’s all desperate attempts at surviving late stage capitalism with some extra cash in pocket
When we actually need a radical revolution and overhaul of our entire way of living
We need to fry our brains free from the conditioned delusions around what it means to live together on this majestic planet

Everything you believe around
A
B
S
O
L
U
T
E
L
Y
E
V
E
R
Y
T
H
I
N
G

All of it in the blender and fried to a crispy crystal clarity

But instead we try another mindfulness e-book with ideas that are just watered down extractions ripped from an ancient Buddhist text
Empty and acontextual and ignoring the fact that our whole system is collapsing causing everyone to feel unstable and burned-out and you can’t fix that with 5 minutes of guided meditation before another insomaniacal night

That’s right, I’m angry. Been angry for as long as I can remember at the half-baked nonsense we are sold as truth© (“this message is brought to you by an entirely corrupt white-collar-criminal business that cares only for its own megalomaniacal $growth$ trajectory”)
And how millions upon millions of people just continue to tryyyy and believe it
“Just the way it is”
“Oh well”
“That’s just the way it is”

No – it’s not just the way it is
What type of escapist and unaffordable retreat has your divine agency fled to?
It’s just the way we created it to be
This > Soil and Soul destroying absurdist psychosis-inducing bureaucratic death machine <
Is. Our. Invention.

Affirm: I love myself and I am complicit in perpetuating a failing system that kills and makes people ill and destroys the planet

No need to get defensive about it, we are all in this together, and we don’t know what to do except maybe
Stir some shit up!
Say NO
Be NON-NICE
Unpleasant
Unlikable
Uncomfortable even
Be honest

And by all means necessary
Crack your brain all the way open, glitch out, fry up, spinn off your axis

Don’t repeat the same thing over and over expecting a different result, we all know by now Albert said that’s the definition of insanity
Do you know that picture of him wild haired, big eyed with his tongue sticking out? Like that

Give me recalcitrant non-compliance in the face of outdated nonsensical and shame-driven norms
Normality™ is a capitalist distortion of reality
A ploy
An insidious brainwash soap bar that removes all the protective natural oil from your psyche until it’s so squeaky clean you can barely even recognize yourself
Making everyfckingbody think something is wrong with them

Is there something wrong with me? While I carefully consider the possibility from every angle in a variety of individualized therapies, I will keep these words to myself for years because I’ve been educated to obey the cynical little white man censor in our hivemind saying things like: “too much,” “unkind,” “not scientific enough,” “too emotional,” “not spiritual enough,” “unprofessional,” “not nuanced enough,” “too complicated,” “self-indulgent,” “immature,” “unrealistic,” “offensive,” “and, eeergh, evidently… entirely hypocritical”
Oh, God forbid we hurt anybody’s feelings but our own

There is nothing wrong with me. My Spirit is a messy divergent and sensitive wilderness. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are a human Being

We’ve never meshed well with the overculture that would give our true selves a plethora of pathologies if we would allow it. I am not sick. To the contrary. And I am not interested in submerging myself in the stagnant waters of victimhood, diminishing ourselves in conflict avoiding and *alwaystriggered* unresolved traumas
Tired
Done
Enough
That pain underneath is serious, just never a justification for inaction, passivity, or half-living
Accept my compassion for your suffering
Do not expect me to drown in it with you
That’s not what Love does

Give me, instead, the untamed madness that lives in the center of your heartfire and let me hear your soundwaves crashing into the shores of this godforsaken empire of denial

We need you at the helm of this ship
Roaring so crazy and wild we all end up belly-laughing on the floor because it’s so true and pure
And, holy shit, it’s actually real for once

A safety net with a hole the size of your body

Yvet Youssef

Feel free
Feel free to mourn
Feel free to grieve
Feel free to scream at the powers that be perpetuating the conditions for this grieving
Feel free to rock your body back and forth to a rhythm played for immediate peace

Feel free to shake your head so hard you just might lose your mind
There’s not a lot of time
There’s a safety net with a hole the size of your body at your disposal
Such is this human condition
It will inevitably kill you

And if you are so lucky to have some say in how it is going to kill you
Feel free to dance defiantly to the tune of your own liberation

You see, the oppressed become the oppressor, like Freire said, until somebody steps out of that loop with fierce determination

There’s only one path towards collective freedom and it is paved by you stomping your feet to the beat of your own liberation

So dance
Grab the hands of anyone willing to join the movement
This cannot be forced
It is just an invitation extended to every living thing

That’s you
Every living thing
Feel free
Feel free to mourn
Feel free to grieve
Feel free to scream at the powers that be perpetuating the conditions for this grieving
Feel free to rock your body back and forth to a rhythm played for immediate peace

//

///

//

These words were in part inspired by the trance inducing performance of Natural Information Society @ Le Guess Who 23, which Joshua Abrams closed by stating “this is music for immediate peace” and I felt that completely.

(posted first on IG in dec. 2023)

Collective Grief Work

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If we do not grieve, as human beings, our Soul dies.
If we do not express our fury, it metastasizes.
If we do not rage against injustice, injustice will eat us alive, one by one.

There are different types of anger. James Baldwin (one of the most visionary writers in U.S.-American history) distinguished between 2 types of anger: The anger that stems from fear and the anger that rises up from a person in the face of oppression and injustice.

We have to learn to recognize the difference. Within ourselves and in other people. You can feel the difference if you pay attention.

A Black woman yelling that Black Lives Matter holds a different anger than a white man yelling at protesters that they should be arrested. The first is a righteous, justified, holy response to oppression. It is real. The second is an expression of fear: the fear of losing control, or power; the fear of disruption of the status quo. It’s “anger” as a placeholder for something else.

James Baldwin said: “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain”.

That pain – underneath it all. If we do not address that pain, if we repress it in an attempt not to feel it, our Soul dies. Once our Soul is numb and deadened, we are capable of so much violence. As individuals and as a collective.

Look at the state of our Earth, our societies. How much harm we cause each other and our planet. One of the reasons this destruction is possible is because we have – for generations upon generations – refused to deal with pain. It is like we have repressed grieving for so long we barely even know where to begin.

The reluctance or refusal to feel pain means to accept that this pain will be projected onto others instead. This is a natural law. We can’t escape this. Pain travels along in subtle or unsubtle ripples of violence if we do not scoop it up and address it, unfold it, sit with it, feel it. In family systems, social inequality, addiction, oppression, genocide or ecocide: It will boil up somewhere – and it will do harm. Everything is connected like that.

Here, my (only) hope for our world is this: May we grieve. Feel the discomfort. Feel the unbelievable sorrow of all the harm we have done to others and the harm that was done to us. It’s a prerequisite for accessing true joy or peace. We have to go through it.

I am the descendant of oppressors and the oppressed. Both of those lineages carry so much pain. It is messy and complex. May I feel it and move through it to release it. May I live unafraid of discomfort.

This is a matter of accountability. Maturity. Care. And ultimately: A matter of Liberation. For everyone.

Paradise Is Here

Yvet Youssef

I bow down and kiss the ground in gratitude. Searching for something? Look around you. Touch the soil. Gently place your hand on the bark of a tree and close your eyes. Feel the caress of the breeze on your skin. Listen for the melodies rising from the Earth. We get to live here for a while. Does that not blow your mind?

How we have managed to live lifetimes of bondage in rigid social contracts of disconnection remains a mystery to me.

No more. I am done. I am done struggling for a false sense of belonging to a system I distrust. If it makes me recoil there’s something wrong with it. If it makes me expand it’s the right path. That’s my compass. And I will not settle for anything less to make others feel more “comfortable” – undisturbed in normalized states of perpetual covert depression.

Because Paradise is here. It’s all around us. So is hell; it is created in the human mind and projected into material reality under the watchful gaze of human suffering seeking to multiply itself. I have felt myself at times drowning in it. But if the trees can still bear fruit, if the seeds can still grow, if the desert can still produce flowers; so will I.

[This writing first appeared on my Instagram account (@yvet_youssef) in November of 2018. Sometimes I need to remind myself.]

A Dark Night, A Dawning

Yvet Youssef

Once, in a tense room, palpable dark energy, gloom and suffering surrounding us. Turmoil like a storm that just refused to pass. A room I had made for rest and sweetness, suddenly so heavy.

And in that unbearable weight I looked around me in disbelief. Looked at a person I loved more than I had ever loved anyone as the whirlwind of chaos seemed to spring from the ground beneath his feet. And the only words that I could speak: “This is not my frequency. This isn’t mine. This is not my frequency.”

He told me to leave. And at a certain point you just have to listen even if it’s not making any sense. At a certain point you just have to believe the frequency.

I took a long path down to the bottom of everything. I took my time. And all the way down there, what had appeared to be a solid impermeable ending turned out to be liquid. I stuck my hand through like they do at strange portals in sci-fi movies, baffled. On the other side was an open space, a receptacle of Everything that’s ever been and ever will be, and it was all Love. Just Love. So I began laughing through the tears. There isn’t anything to fear here.

That relief, like a secret, found in the depths of pain; it has forever changed me. You have to let your heart break first. You have to be willing to lose everything. Surrender to it. As the Sufi mystics say: You have to burn down your house, chop off your head, lose your mind. And then: Freedom. And there: Love. One has to chuckle at the simplicity of it all, and how torturous the path towards it can be.

I create from my experience. I take the tuning forks to my heart until I reach a clarity. This is my work. My only real work: To eradicate all barriers that prevent me from experiencing and expressing Love. It’s an ongoing journey. I don’t delude myself with thoughts about arriving somewhere. That’s not the point right now. My objective is growth. Evolution. That’s the frequency I want to harmonize with. To move. To keep my heart wide open and dance with whatever arises.

There is healing to be found in this world. I just have to release the palms of my hands from the tight grips of control to be able to receive it. There isn’t anything to fear here. Breathe easy for a moment. This moment. Plant a flag here. Mark it with highlighter and neon post-its and fairy lights. Adorn it with flower and song. Remember this.

*

*

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Speaking Words of Wisdom Without Having to Die First

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We tend to gobble up wisdom from dead 13th century poets. From deceased men we call philosophers whose work is nestled safely in the stone strata of our human history. We celebrate the wise sages who can no longer speak back. We like our wisdom antiquated, with a layer of dust that we can feel proud to wipe away before somebody else did. “Look what I found; a profound word, it’s so old!”

But wisdom, spoken from living mouths, feminine, passionate, creative, poetic, loud and confident, sensual and vital, alive – iiieeekkkkk oooh nononono… suddenly wise words evoke staggering, heals in sand, stubborn arms crossed, scorn, ridicule and judgement.

“Don’t you think you are a little arrogant for saying that?”
“You sound so sure of yourself, you think you’re all that?”
“I don’t like it when people speak like they know some sort of truth.”
“It’s not that you are wrong, it’s just that you think you are right that’s problematic.”
“Ugh, you sound so teacherly, it’s really annoying.”
“I am just so allergic to those vague spiritual terms.”

And so we float around in pools of ad hominem fallacies. The grand orchestra of silencing the living, so that they refrain from shining too brightly, too confidently, too much empowered. “Nobody shall at any point here think they have something of real value to add to the conversation,” as we raise our hands and take an oath of mediocre superficiality for the sake of all things mundane and undisturbed.

I suppose a dead poet’s words of wisdom have transcended the chains of personality, of character flaw; their words now live on their own in a timeless vacuum of abstracted knowledge. But, they arose in a living human, a real person just like you and me. Not a saint, not an exclusive-collector’s-item-edition of the human form, not a special rarity: A real person. A poet is a living being. A mystic is a living being. A philosopher is a living being. They are not separate from us.

Wisdom is not something anyone can own. It is something we can choose to tap into, to cultivate a relationship with, to grow towards. What name do you want to give it? Awareness, Consciousness, Presence, Loving-Kindness, Divinity, Spirit, Unconditional Love? Whatever word you want to use, it is never dispensed for the sake of personal gain… not if it’s true wisdom (because, again, nobody owns it!) That is not to say that people cannot earn a living from sharing wisdom, or that all philosophers, witches, sages, truth-tellers and mystics should live in destitute poverty in order to be taken seriously. Nah, that’s an old-school myth rooted in a paradigm of scarcity and lack. It’s time to move on.

The intention of sharing wisdom is always loving. Have teachers and gurus abused their power? Yes. Remove them from their pedestals. Obliterate hierarchies with a spirit of Radical Equality. That means you do not place anyone above or below you; it means you do not place yourself above or below anyone. That’s not to say we cannot point out when shit is messed up. Compassion is not coddling or infantilizing. It just means we recognize and respect the inherent worth of life in all its forms. Learn what you can from those who offer their teachings to you. Don’t dwell for too long in resentment around the wrongdoings perpetrated by human suffering. Inquire into the nature of that suffering, look it in the eye, see where it is coming from. Recognize that same pain within you so that you can make the choice not to pass it unwittingly along to others. The most honorable job in the world and, I believe, our greatest responsibility.

Understand that the age of esoteric exclusivity is over. You don’t need some sort of membership to an elusive secret society shrouded in mysterious shadows to know a thing or two about the grand scheme of things. No. The field of mystic knowledge is wide and open, and anyone can at all times choose to walk around there to touch its vibrant dancing grasses. We all have access to wisdom. It’s the very same source those deceased mystics and poets tapped from: A collective consciousness, a Universal Truth, simple, clear, all-encompassing: Love. That’s it. Do blockages to this Love exist within us? Yes. Do we sometimes stubbornly refuse to feel it? Oh, hell yes. Do we still have access to it if we are willing to open the window a little bit? Absolutely.

The reason why these living mouths, these luscious humans, these blood-pumping-sweet-hearts would even dare to speak words of wisdom, is to further the human cause. It’s for the sake of Evolution. It’s for the sake of Everything and Everyone. We need each other to grow and heal and evolve. That’s what I know I came here to do. And I want your heart-glowing-sparkling-wisdom, sweet one. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Let us infuse each other’s wise words, weave ourselves into the fabric of our shared existence. So we can Love each other and ourselves as fully and deeply as we can muster in courageous tenderness. I am not asking for much; just everything you are, just your soul-fire, just your reasons for Being. Thank you very much.

Prayer

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I am reclaiming my prayer from the dungeons of dogma and fear

It’s not that I have been godless after losing my religion at 15
It’s that my sense of God existed beyond scripture
Beyond demarcations of insulated groups
Beyond right and wrong answers from rulebooks
Misinterpreted and abused
For public control and political gain

I studied philosophy to get to the bottom of things
But there too
Limitations reigned the playing field
Old, white, deceased men deciding what was and was not intelligent enough to uphold the status quo of intellectual escapism

But this KNOWING
I can tell it doesn’t come from me
I can sense it does not belong to this body or mind
I have known this long before they sent me to confess my sins to a bearded stranger
Long before they told me my blood was too unclean for communion
Long before I was silenced and shamed for my desire, my critique, my questioning

God is in the depths of despair and in the heights of glory
God is in the wind through the leaves and the ocean waves crashing to shore
God is in the stars and the moon and the lines in my hands
As far and as close as everything
Always

God is in the simplest truth
*I love you*
The simplest truth
The most unfathomable majesty
The most intuitive path

A relief
A surrendering
An uncontainable smile
Birthed from cosmic knowledge swirling through this finite physical form
Able to perceive itself

“She Feels the Music”

Yvet Youssef5 Comments

Some weeks ago I found myself at one of the most mesmerizing concerts. The sound was perfect, the music was pure excellence, and the venue was beautiful. World class musicians producing sparkling melodies and stirring rhythms. Imagine yourself in this space for a moment. Can you see it? Soul uplifting gloriousness. While I am taking in this incredible soundscape, a group of tall Dutch white men gather several feet away from me. I notice they gather so close to me because I was dancing, and they kinda took my dancing space… I get slightly irked when people invade my dancing space whenever there is actually plenty of room everywhere else. It’s like being in a long row of completely empty toilet stalls, and the next person entering the bathroom picking that one stall right next to you. And now your pee won’t come out until they leave, so you are just staring at the shoes of your new neighbor thinking: “Of all the stalls, in all the world, you had to pick the one right next to mine?” And I know they can tell I am being exceptionally quiet, so there is this awkward silent standoff happening until one of us flushes first. Yeah, OK, so I have public-toilet-issues, I know some of you out there know what I am talking about…

Anyway, I digress. We were at a concert. The men were closing in. But that was not all. In a completely silent concert hall, where everyone is moved by the gorgeous sound, these men begin an absurdly loud conversation amongst themselves. Let me tell you this: Nothing gets me out of musical ecstasy quite as fast as a group of insensitive men talking way too loud about absolutely nothing to each other through a performance. Let’s call this the sonic equivalent of man-spreading. It is incredibly annoying and energetically invasive. Since I feel like I can no longer afford being very shy about making my needs known to people, I begin frantically waving at these guys to please be quiet. But, as was already clear from their irreverent talking, they were not aware enough of their surroundings to notice me. I try to immerse back into the music while attempting to ignore their chatter. The band announces their last song, and as they begin playing the men start talking yet again. I decide to tap one of them on the shoulder and gesture my request for their silence during this last song. One of them nods at me. They stop talking for a while.

As I go back into the soundscape, I feel thankful for getting to witness this music. I close my eyes and my body naturally sways to the beautiful melodies when suddenly a voice interrupts from behind me. One of the men. This guy had apparently been observing me dance and felt the pressing need to unsubtly inform his pals: “She feels the music” – followed by one of those utterly stupid Beeves and Butthead type of chuckles: huhuhh huhuh. I don’t visibly respond to this, but again jolted out of my communion with the sound, I think to myself: “What the hell else is a person supposed to do with music?”

At a different location I am attending a concert by an incredible band that plays some of the best psychedelic rock of this generation. I notice the crowd exists primarily of men and that the venue is a little bit too crowded for my taste. My friend and I find a spot in the back that has slightly more wiggle room. As should be clear by now, I am pretty particular about space during concerts, and if I don’t have at least a little wiggle room, I will likely leave. The reason for this is that I feel the need to move my body when I hear good music, and if I am prevented from doing so in an overcrowded space I get pretty intense claustrophobia. Additionally, I find that if I can’t move freely with the music, I am less capable of receiving it completely. I want to hear it with my ears but, since I have the physical ability, also with my spine and my arms and my legs. As the concert ensues, I look out over the crowd and notice that 95 percent of the people is standing completely still. Two young guys are standing still in front of me. One taps the other on his shoulder and says: “You could also play this” – in a tone that reveals a certain criticism of the sound. As if the fact that this music is playable by other musicians is somehow reducing their ability of enjoying it. 

I try it out for a while, to stand completely still, no movement, just observing. The music comes in through my ears and stops at the brain. I experience the music maybe at a 25 percent, if not less. As soon as I move my body with the melodies I start feeling the music more intensely again and start enjoying what before was merely alright.

Then it hits me. In our intellect driven world the experience of live music for many people is also reduced to an intellectual affair. The very art form that is meant to move every cell in your body and vibrate your entire Being to a different level of consciousness has become, left in the hands of the cultural descendants of the European enlightenment, something to merely observe with the mind. So if you are not feeeeeling the music, then you must be thinking about it: …Is it good, is it not good, can I play this or can’t I play this, which guitar brand is that, how does it compare to the record, are the band members interacting with each other, I think I think I think I will give this performance a 6.6 on a scale of one to ten… 

I look around the static crowd and suddenly feel sad. Because this precisely illustrates the biggest problem of our time. Our inability to feel. Feeling, our society instructs, is something not to be taken seriously, something to be made fun of, ridiculed even. Especially (though not exclusively by any means) by men, who have been systematically trained to repress their feelings and to rely entirely on intellectual capacities for “survival” in a hyper-rational world. A woman intensely experiencing music and swaying her body to the sound is so peculiar that someone feels the need to comment on it followed by an awkward chuckle. Because the feminine, the creative, the physical, the embodied, the sensual has been repressed for so incredibly long it makes people feel uncomfortable.

We are collectively so afraid of the body. So afraid of sensuality. So afraid of expressing ourselves in abundant bliss. We have created repressive barriers where unbridled ecstatic flow should be. (And BTW, this also includes the fear of peeing in public toilets for the strange anxiety of someone else hearing you during the most basic and essential task in human-body maintenance…) We have this idea that we live in relative freedom, but we don’t take into account the ridged complexes of our collective culture of emotional, spiritual, and sensual oppression. And we are primarily just talking about dancing here, but think about what this means for the ways in which people make love to each other…. Holy shit…. That’s really awful. Hyper-rational sex, anyone? I think I’ll pass, thank you very much. I don’t want that. I don’t want that confinement. I want to move. I want to sway. I want freedom.

I have lived for decades with detailed instructions from the headquarters of our culture on how to hate my body. I have been told time and again to “act normal” – which is actually the commandment of invisibility. Don’t show yourself too much, don’t express yourself too much, don’t enjoy yourself too much. I have spent decades struggling to unlearn those messages, and to learn how to love my body regardless. It’s an ongoing process. We are here on Earth in physical form for a short amount of time. Nobody really knows what happens afterwards. Can we afford to let our time here be controlled by fear of our own capacities? Or do we wake up from our disconnected slumber to wholeheartedly, profoundly, and unapologetically FEEL the music?

PRIVILEGE

Yvet Youssef3 Comments

So I get to decide on a whim to travel the globe,
Climb on some pyramids,
Dance til the morning hours in Lisbon,
Wait for a tube on a London platform,
Eat msemen in Marrakesh,
Avec jus d’avocat aux fruit secs – sans amande
Of course (allergies)
I get to travel in and out of North Africa to my heart’s content
(And my heart is kinda needy these days)
This is my freedom for being born North of the Mediterranean Sea
My parents chose these Netherlands over Egyptian soil and I could pay for my passport
With a lifetime of “where are you from’s?” from fellow citizens.
But at the border
My red booklet with golden inscription of this tiny kingdom
Erases all questions
Grants entry with a casual nod from tired agents in funny glass boxes:
Welcome
Welcome
Welcome

So I dance in the desert,
Meet family at Khan el-Khalili for shisha and nànà,
Drift on the waters of the Nile at sunset,
Feel at home in the homes of relatives and friends
Ahlen Ahlen Ahlen ya Habibti!!!
Marhaba
Alhamdulillah!

But when we make plans for those very same family members and friends
To visit the Netherlands,
To eat warme stroopwafels at the Saturday market,
To see their cousin perform music on stage,
To walk along the gorgeous grachten of my hometown,
To talk and laugh in cozy cafes til midnight,
To dance to electronic music in my favorite clubs,
To share my city with them,
We are halted in the imaginary container of nice ideas
Where “Inshallah” does not suffice.

Because even with officiated invitations and detailed descriptions and entirely explicated intentions of travel and family background checks and names and dates of birth and education history and income statements and work records and references and fees upon fees upon some more fees payed and all of this fucking information stacked up in piles at the immigration offices covered in sweat and nerves and goodwill and hope

Their visas are denied

Not enough evidence
Not enough information
Not enough effort ploughing through bureaucratic mazes to be granted
Entrance through the hermetically sealed gates of Europe
And never an accountable human to call and ask
“What the fuck?”
“Why???”

I stare at my passport at the bottom of my travel bag still covered in Sahara sand
And I am flooded with that overwhelming nausea you only get from feeling
Injustice
Viscerally
Shame and guilt and anger arise
That my freedom comes from long histories of violence and oppression
That my passport is a discriminatory document
An official instrument of legal exclusion
Of inequality
Of racist ideology
Of human sickness

And to be honest with you, I don’t know what to do.
I try to call offices where nobody is ever responsible for anything to protest to no avail, and I write it out in long refrain. But I don’t know what to do about this diseased world we have inherited, this sick system nobody seems to have the keys to.

All I know is that globalization is a myth
White supremacy is real
Colonization never ended
And every single freedom we have is tainted
If it is somehow linked to the oppression of others.

The nationstate is a perverted story
Fed to us by the bloody hands of history.
A violence so normalized
We wave flags for it.