Once on, the bracelets won’t come off unless I take a pair of garden shears and cut myself loose. I cry and watch my skin turn red as they squeeze and squeeze. My father’s mother, the woman who named me, and who my sister and I are instructed to call Ammie-the word for Mother, not Grandmother-and my aunt Nagmana, soap up my hands to squeeze them on. I graduate to gold bracelets on both my wrists which are brought over to me from Karachi. I wear gold earrings before I can understand what it means to be a girl who wears gold earrings. Someone at the hospital pierces my ears without my consent. What happens to the offspring of that body to attempt a meaningful presence in a place? Does she have the right? Reasons for a disenfranchised body to not stay in one place. I begin with the alienation I live with that was formed originally by my parents, and for them by their parents through migrations of bodies.
Shaheen Qureshi | Excerpt from 'In my loneliness your memories are my companion, what am I to do, something is happening'
