I’m tired of being a genie in a bottle, tired of being the
Orientalist dream–your lewd fantasies have
Rendered me an
Insomniac
“Yes sir, no sir”—did someone say
Belly dancer?
Thick lips, full hips
Husky voice, high pitch
Black hair that curves and curls and does
Not frizz or grease like hair always does
Low bodices and golden skin
An hourglass—perfected
Sublimely submissive yet defensive on command; a woman tamed and molded
Into having
Calculated animosity and predictable ferocity
To render the feel
Of something wild
Without allowing
The uncontrollable fire and tempest to spit and spout from her perfectly plump mouth, crafted for nothing save for sweet nothings, meant for something akin to people pleasing—white
People
Pleasing.
And now you say you’ve been cultured, blending different tongues to make yourself feel ethnic—as if there is
No difference
Between the plethora of South Asian languages
And the seas of dialectic Arabic—
Don’t make a cultural contestant out of me, mislabel me, homogenize me as a happenstance from
somewhere Far East / I impolitely hereby decline your invitation of infamy, I do not consent
to the Occident “accidentally” ripping me to shreds, only to
cash in, and repackage and sell me again and again / woe to the pieces
of me you’ve decided to cut and paste—take apart my face and disassemble my body, strip me of my lips and hips until one of us is shaken and bloody–rebrand our literature with white saviorist ligatures, stitching in your western myths to minimize us as the perfect victims, the perfect / handheld / miniatures–
Humari kitaabo ko phar diya, humari larkiyoun ko bigaarh diya (you’ve ripped our books, you’ve ruined our girls)
Humare gharo ko torh diya, lekin hamare gham aur ghussay (you’ve broken our homes, yet our grief and anger)
Na sadiyon se na sadiyon tak (has neither for ages been, nor for ages will ever be)
Koi samajh paya (understood by anyone) –
Apne aap ko khudaa bana lo, ghuroor mei koodh ke doobh jao (make yourself a god, jump and drown in your arrogance)
Jab tum jaogay, hum afsous nahi karenge (when you go, we will not mourn)
Sab aik tara se, tandhi saas le kar, sukoon se so jayenge (we will all as one release a cold sign, and peacefully fall asleep).
Trends turned bottles, commodified; captured in essence, and swindled until dwindling in profit, we’ve always been caste-typed for spinning but these dervishes are fervently charged now, we hear the alarms now, it is the twenty-first century, and the veiled woman is no longer just for lust, she also can’t be trusted, she’s a flight threat, pat her down slow and thorough to remind her to be compliant and not defiant—
Kehse bataon, sikhaon, ya dikhaon (how to say, to teach, or show)
Ke ham ghulam ka parda gira chukay hain aur inqilab ka jhanda utaa chukay hain (we have thrown down the prisoner’s veil and picked up revolution’s flag)
We are not dolls paraded like jewels or imprisoned animals in captivity;
We are not genies in your bottles to commemorate your manifest destinies or
American dreams; we are not necklaces to adorn your wanderlust
Or fountains to quench your fetishes
For cultural identities
— jasmine isn’t really real.
~ Maaheen Shaikh `25
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