I’m only going to say it once Move to the sea with me Let’s part With announcements over tannoys Tunnels and walls Battered, grey faces I don’t want to anymore I want the waves And creaking of floorboards Shutters and stone surfaces Olive oil and honeyed tomatoes Stale bread and hanging herbs Your shadow in the evening
Floating behind me Cicadas or crickets, I don’t mind which Low lights and space in my head Thick paper And pencils strewn across wooden tables The slamming of backgammon chips in the distance The relief of a breeze on a warm night It’s time This is an angry place I’m wasted on battles Searching nettle haystacks for specks of joy Slap Rebuttal Jab Let’s be our best selves I want to touch your finger Out of time
As soon as he sat down I knew He’d be one of them, one of them His pregnant wife busy talking to her mum, towering over her His eyes scanned for one, a flesh to turn around his tongue He found me He stared and stared I caught his eye I stared back I looked away I looked back He’s still looking It happened again and again Naked, dirty I tried. Tried to shame him, tried to make him look away. I couldn’t hold it, I looked away, and I lost Years of training, years of gender, years of harassment Years of being looked at, touched up like I’m not there By them Them Ignorant men Who see the female Only the female, Not the thoughts about swimming pools after reading that piece, not my Masters in political economy, not my lecturer lanyard, not the pain in my right toe, not my thoughts about love and the tree I’m trying to protect
None of that
He wants my flesh
I’m starting to shake, I’m going to get up and punch him in the face, the fucking little fucking cunt, I’ve got so much to be angry about this week, this month Is it what I’m wearing, is it my legs is it my dress, is the paper covering it up enough, my neckline is high what is it Can’t think straight, and before I can order my thoughts my arms pick up my bags as the train speeds between stations, the sun shining in as if nothing, nothing, my back straightened up and my legs moved me, despite me, stumbling, further down the carriage, like a good woman, minimising conflict, take it in, absorb, be ill from the inside, internalise, close in, keep it in They want us to share bathrooms with them? Them? You must be fucking kidding me Staring out of the doors as the suburbs zoom by as if nothing, nothing. I put a meditation on, it’s not working My heart is still beating, adrenaline pumping
I was just thinking this morning That I feel better
Anxiety leaving me after that month
Now it’s rising, rising, into my chest, jaw, teeth I was just thinking I won’t be as angry at boxing tonight.
I can’t believe I moved, it’s OK I moved, it’s because I would have screamed, I would have shouted YOU FUCKING CUNT STOP STARING AT ME YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING CUNT
This meditation isn’t going to help No I need loud Rage Against the Machine Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me I change at Kings Cross Ah, that’s better So much better I want to smash things up and crowd surf Rage and Beastie Boys You mother fucking fucking cunts
Twenty minutes have gone and
I walk up Holborn.
I know.
I know what I’m going to do next time.
I know what I’ll fucking do.
When a woman stands up she stands up for all women, for all women
I went to the Hay Festival this year for the first time since the pandemic. I took some notes on the train back in the hope of capturing some of the humours which swam through me.
The Train Journey Convo One of the best things in life is an epic train chat with randoms.
On the way down, my friend and I had the most incredible and hilarious conversation with the two people who happened to join us on our table. One was a 40-something sharply dressed, stocky English fella with two mobiles, a tablet, and a beaming grin, and the other was a colourfully dressed round Colombian lady in her 60s. Incredibly, Maria’s Sicilian husband – who she met at in club in Cardiff in the early 1970s – had lost his favourite blue jumper made by the brand that our man Derek worked for.
He made some phone calls to locate the item in XXL. We also discussed how conservative Sicilians were compared to Colombians, and the relative position of women in each country. Derek showed us pics of his six sons and we discussed the pros and cons of having children earlier in life. We talked about the beauty of the Wye valley. We parted ways with laughter. I live for hours like these.
Celebrating conservatism conversation Sparked by her reading of my piece on Ramadan, my mate and I had an impassioned chat about how misguided the contemporary British Left is on religion – especially radical Islam – and how it is a betrayal of women. We discussed how as we age, our bottom lines sharpen: women’s rights, secularism and freedom. We wondered if it was our calling to start some sort of platform for the secular Middle Eastern diaspora in Britain.
I also shared how my other diaspora friend in France had uttered the quote of the year when recalling colleagues’ bafflement that Egyptians can be xenophobic. “Don’t they realise that it’s racist to assume that brown people can’t be racist,” he said. So good.
Reacquainting myself with different versions of myself I’m not a rigid person. But I forget this. The story I tell myself and others conveys a sense that I am a quite controlled, inflexible and self-disciplined. This is partly true. But not always. There are other Nadias. I’m an ex-smoker who rarely drinks. In conversations about alcohol, I’m critical of booze – both its affect on me and on society in general. Yet as soon as we unpacked our bags and organised the tent, it became apparent that nothing was to come between me, a can of lager and a fag, sitting right there in a camping chair out in a field. There is me, this me, writing at a table in the suburbs between four walls on a working week, and there is me in a field, at a festival. The smell and sounds of a campsite transform me, the joy of a sunset in the open, the campsite atmosphere, and the stars.
Queue conversations
Whether buying a tea, or getting your book signed, in Hay it was so easy to talk to people in a way that I – even the most social of people – find hard to enact in everyday England.
Margaret Atwood and Rob Delaney laughing through grief
Bacon baps and breakfast rolls at the Monkey Bunch Funky Munch
I got Covid for the second time, and all I could feel was grateful.
Grateful for my health. Both genetic and curated Grateful that so distant from a vaccine, my symptoms were still mild Grateful for how it came and erased anxieties of the last few weeks, in a strange strange way
It came and told me to stop. I am matter over mind in that Mediterranean way. What the body wants, the body gets. So I stopped. And I sat down. I lay down. I switched the engine off. I asked little of myself or others, or of myself for others.
Grateful for the glorious May weather. It could have been a dark, cold winter, but it was not Grateful for the sun to hang my wash after wash after wash on the line Grateful for my No Mow May English jungle of a lawn, with its brambles and buttercups, bees and butterflies
Grateful for England’s green, its green green, the best of greens, this summer green Grateful for the yellow and white irises that popped up like meercats Grateful for the rosebuds, appearing in their clusters Grateful for the teenage woodpecker with its scruffy plume, swooping in to visit every morning Grateful for the mega chard that had grown to above my height, bolting and eager to flower Grateful it was a tight month anyway, so saving cash was just-as-well Grateful for the fruit in the bowl, vegetables in the fridge, rice in the larder and 24 fish fingers in the freezer. And lots and lots of peas Grateful it wasn’t in two weeks or the week after that when I had plans. I would have been sad, sad, sad, so sad Grateful it wasn’t the week before or the week before that when I’d been high on spring, meeting, travelling around town, laughing, dancing, spinning round a ballroom, dancing, feasting, chatting, singing, dancing, running, walking, feasting, chatting, dancing, dancing, shagging, dancing, dancing, dancing
Grateful for mother fox and her two cubs bounding around in the neighbour’s garden Chat GPT told me I shouldn’t feed a wild fox. But Chat GPT, she’s a mum. With babies. She jumps the neighbours’ new border-of-a-fence with ease, ha. Nature always finds a way. I’m so pleased. Dog biscuits for you my darling. You can come sunbathe anytime you like.
It’s been two weeks since the two red lines appeared on the lateral flow. So retro, my friends said, no one tests anymore. Many assumed I was poorly, I stayed home for 10 days, save that little walk in the morning, setting in like a ritual. I wasn’t ill, just bodily slow. And in need of bread, butter and biscuits. And lots and lots of Netflix.
What body wants, body gets. Matter over mind, every time.
It’s been two weeks, but I can’t run, cycle or sing. My lungs won’t have it. I stopped smoking years ago, but it’s like I’ve been 90s clubbing if I pick up the pace. This is what happened last time, the post-covid lung thing.
Vicks and time. Olbas Oil and time Chest-opener yoga and time Ten weeks I give it.
I did the Wendover circular with a Meet Up group anyway. Testing myself? That’s the English side, there. Right there. I survived the hike, “the country air did me good”. The English side again, see? That weird protestant thing. Then the Richmond Loop, then dancing tango for hours and hours. See? I’m all contradictions, as are you. I wouldn’t take me as seriously as you sometimes do.
Everything happens at the right time.
There are no mistakes, only lessons.
I had a good Covid. If it finds you, I hope it’s kind to you too.
Mum on the phone from Egypt: Shofty? Did you see? Eh, what ya mum? The Ramadan lights. They’ve put up Ramadan things instead of the Christmas things Ah begad? Really? Where? In Regent Street or one of those streets. Oh. I see. Can you believe it. Ha. Yes I can. Mish momkin. It cannot be true.
—
I hate religion. Particularly the deeply sexist ones, where women are servants, vehicles to seed and produce, rather than complete beings with intellectual facets, hopes and dreams of their own.
As a woman in the world I hold a hard-line on the bearers of misogyny. If not me than who? You’ve got to fight your corner. Comrades or not, the men won’t and don’t do it for, or with us. No matter what feminist talk they talk.
So I have no time for Islam, especially the brand of Wahhabism rife in the UK today. I have even less time for the contemporary British Left’s hypocrisy on the subject: Religion is dated, conservative and is critiqued in discourse, as long at it is establishment religion. Christianity, you can deride and ridicule in writing and in culture. But minority religion, no. Here cultural relativism comes into its worst: as long as oppressed people are practicing it, we don’t reach into that space with our values, no matter how conservative and sexist those practices and social trends are, and how they show up in the world and who they oppress.
There are few things worse than a left built on opposition rather than values.
Deep sigh
So I ignore Ramadan.
I ignore it hard.
Secular Arabs, shout loud and proud.
But as always, that’s only part of the story. Ramadan is also where I come from. It’s in my roots, this stuff. Egypt was Islamised in 646AD and like it or not I’m from the world that created the lanterns, the rites, the call for prayer. It is woven through me. I miss waiting at the table for the Iftar cannon to go off at sunset, and eating together at my grandmother’s table. I miss the Ramadan specials on the telly. I miss eating shakshuka, 2atayef and drinking 2amar el deen. I miss that stuff and it pangs me sometimes. But often I don’t think of it at all. And in that duality, I inhabit.
I dust off my little ‘made in china’ Ramadan lantern. I put it on my tableya coffee table. We look at each other for a while.
The thing about Diaspora Feelz, is that it is complicated.
I try not to write pieces about feelings, so as not to contribute to the avalanche of narcissistic writing so pervading Anglo-America today, in fear of adding a pebble to the mountain of empty we’ve built the twenty first century on. No your feelings don’t matter most, the truth matters more. Get a grip.
So then I should get a grip too, right? But the thing is, culture is not harmless. It’s not just other people’s cute rituals in a vacuum. It spreads, like sun-rays or pollen, mold or wild-fire. It is about economics and it is about freedom. It is political and pervasive. It makes and breaks a society. We see things, we brush them to one side, and often as women we press ignore, over and over. Then one day you wake up and think how did it get to this?
And if you’re me: Why didn’t I do something?
Ramadan, as a concentrated display of ritual, is just a fact. Like the weather and Christmas, when it is there, it is everywhere. I may be in the UK, but Islamism seeks me out, creeping round the corner when I least expect it, wearing me down. When more and more people exhibit conservative behaviour, dress conservatively, parading signals of their conservatism, it chokes me and my colours, my short-shorts, my joy for life, my strut and my sex. It chokes me, it chokes me. And this is how it starts.
I lost Cairo, will also lose my corner of London?
The whole thing is – I’m going to use a word I despise (but it’s just so fitting) –
Triggering.
Even the Duolingo girl is veiled. Celebrating Conservatism. Great.
I pick up the lantern and press the plastic button on the bottom. It sings ‘wahawi ya wahawi’, lights flashing. I switch it off and put it down.
Mum knew an Egypt where people wore mini skirts and rode bikes. Where you could go for a bikini-laden swim at the lido and grab a pool-side beer. When I started secondary school in the 90s we had one veiled girl across all forms and age groups. By the time I left university less than a decade later, 80% of women on the street had covered their hair. Friends fell to the teachings of this sheikh or that, covered up and retreated. Men stopped shaking my hand. Roads were closed for public prayer. Mosques got bigger loudspeakers. Sexual harassment and groping went through the roof.
Fundamentalism can have a slow creep, but I smell it a mile away. I was drafting this piece in a London library when she passed behind me, shrouded in black nylon. She stood a couple of metres away, facing the computing bookshelf. She pulled a pop-up prayer mat from her pocket, took off her shoes and began. Allahu Akbar. La Illaha illa allah. I took a deep breath. I could hear her mutter the Fatha. This is how it starts. My throat tightened, like a world closing in. At that moment I felt at one with women in Iran and Afghanistan, of women everywhere who got choked, over time and space. Claustrophobic, angry, powerless.
I told mum.
What? In a library? You can’t just pray like that in a public place in England, I just can’t believe it ya Nadia. Believe it, mum. Didn’t the library staff do something? Mum, think about it, what can they do? This is a multi-ethnic borough. They probably don’t know how to react, and anyway they’d be terrified of being racist or worse “un-inclusive”. Perhaps they’d know what to do if someone was holding a rosary and doing 100 Hail Marys in the corner, but what can they do? I don’t know what anyone can do.
The only thing more depressing than a girl or woman with her hair covered, is the celebration of her subjugation, and a society that doesn’t provide her with a way out.
I fantasized about set up a catholic confession box in library corner as an exercise.
I don’t like feeling helpless.
I don’t like feeling muffled.
And I still don’t know what to do with Ramadan.
I got down on the carpet, crossing my legs and faced the lantern. I looked at its crescent and minaret, and its glitter filled window. I thought about the moon. The cool, calm moon.
More and more women draped in long black sheets shuffle down my high street. Some may applaud what they see as multiculturalism. I just see conservatism
Closing in on me Draped in black Pores wrapped in dark cling film Covered Contained Controlled Joyless Unjust The sexism of it Up and down the street
A few days later, I looked up at the full moon gone midnight, after a big night out. It was enormous and round and beautiful. I stood in the street and beamed at it – a full grin, arms pinned back. I love the moon, we have a natural affinity with it. Our 50% of humanity, whose bodies cycle and undulate as tides, out and in, out and in, all the seasons in a month.
Then it came to me. The realisation about my Ramadan lantern. It was in its rightful place I thought as I unlocked my door, intoxicated on steak and Malbec. Next to the ACFM turntable mat, and various coasters: Polish communist artwork, Taheya Kariokka belly dancing, me and my mate Matt in Belgium drinking Kwak, and Nigella looking sultrily at the camera grating something. All those things are a little bit of me in some way, things I identify with. They look good together, it is a good collection. The lantern is fine just where it is. And that’s my Ramadan.
The other day:
Shofty Shofty? Did you see? What now mum? The SNP guy doing salaat el gom3a Oh my god really, haha. Of course. Also guess what, my friend came back from Dubai and says there is no sign of Ramadan there, nothing. No decorations or anything. Weird ha? You guys have swapped places with the Gulf. Don’t say that mum. That’s depressing. They already own half of London. Yes, I know.
It’s been a long time since I published anything here. The last piece that I wrote which wasn’t a book review or a repost of an article from elsewhere was this one, from this day a whole two years ago.
Why did I stop blogging?
It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with this, to accept that I had ceased, ground to a halt. Subliminally, at the lymphatic level, I told myself in some visceral language that I was busy, writing elsewhere, working, focusing on other things. I denied myself the itch my humanity needs to scratch.
And it’s not that I don’t have anything to say. Oh no. I am not short of ideas or opinions, reflections or musings. Yet I have published nothing in writing over the past year.
A lovely UAL colleague said to me last week, and Nadia how is your practice? I was stunned. I searched inside myself, my chin to my chest. I shrugged. I didn’t know what to say. What is my practice again? This is my practice. My art, and I’ve neglected it. And it is this, my art, that blows life in to me.
I finished my first novel over a year ago and in the quest to get it published, I have deserted the craft that feeds me.
I thought about this on Monday. And it dawned on me in that eye widening way, as I sat in the library: I’ve been here before. There was another era, a time, where I would write secretly, squirreling thoughts away from myself, on envelopes, receipts, denying I ever wrote. When I needed to write, but couldn’t face the fact that I did, as if the very writing would make some truth visible, the giant elephant on my shoulder would appear. There was a time where I stopped myself writing.
It is often when we have so much to say, that we say nothing at all.
And I. Am so angry.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that what has happened to feminism in Britain over the last few years would have happened. That clever, clever patriarchy. I’ll write about THAT in 30 years, ha. I’m no fool.
But the anger has disciplined me, stifled me. I realise that now.
At the Million Women Rise rally last weekend a female voice boomed When a woman stands up for herself she stands up For All Women. For All Women.
It stayed with me. I realised that when I write, I write for all women. For women in light and dark times, for women who can think thoughts but cannot utter them. For those who write on the page but cannot publish, for all the woman who shall be liberated by their words.
I recently read bits of Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex for our ACFM podcast episode on Myths. I was moved again by her words. My radical allotment friends call me Simone of the Suburbs, I recalled. I smiled to myself, a warmth filled my cheeks. I took a minute. We really do stand on the shoulders of giants.
So I’ll write for you Simone. And for Huda Shaarawi, Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, and the giants of our past. For my contemporaries, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ece Temelkuran. For our living greats Angela Davis and Gloria Steinem, both who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. For women and girls everywhere, this is my pledge to you, that I will write again and often.
If capitalism is a project of consciousness deflation, than what would a project of consciousness inflation look like?
That is the offering of Acid Communism, the plentiful, the generous, the Everything for Everyone. The: It doesn’t matter who you are, or where you come from, we will care for you anyway. You don’t need a label to get in here, you don’t need to wear a costume, be this or that, act up. Come here my friend, let us peel away those layers. You are human, and that is enough. That is enough for me to extend my hand, to you. This is Red Plenty.
In times of crisis, people form tribes.
But if there is us, then there is them.
An inside, creates an outside.
Soon, value and judgement follow.
It is a trap. There is a logic of how we got here. But it is a trap.
What if celebrating difference is a trap, what if my own personal, internal, individual, identity, is a trap?
Climb up now, there is still time. Before you drown, and take me with you, please no, I do not want to drown in this.
What if we celebrated sameness? What if I could see you? Where it matters, we are all the same. We all feel love, hate, fear, pain, the warmth of a hug, the discomfort of indigestion, the power of laughter.
When we recognise ourselves in one another, we bear fruit of solidarity.
When we look for difference, we are soon bound.
When society is ill, its wounds gaping, how quickly, we, women become objects. How quickly we are interrupted by that angry, frustrated, male gaze looking for something to eat, punch, fuck his pain away.
End Male Violence Against Women! End Phallocentric Activism Now!
—————————————————-
In our future, I meet you at the canteen. It is not far away, this place. It is bright, sunshine bursts through the glass, there are plants hanging everywhere, there is a stream of water.
The food is plentiful, yet cheap, sustainable but luxurious. We chat and make plans, build worlds and talk nonsense. The atmosphere and aesthetic makes us happy to be alive. We can sit for as long as we like, we are not being watched by video or clock. Conversation comes easily, we do not need to be anywhere else.
We enjoy this moment, this now.
In our future, we talk to strangers, who do not seem strange or estranged. Everyone is curious and has time to marvel others’ stories or the shape of that leaf. We stop and stare at that little shoot peeking through the concrete, soon a flower signalling spring.
In our future there are places where we stretch our muscles and welcome the day, where we sit around tables, learn and make things. We paint shapes on huge canvasses in vast spaces.
In our future we have so many places to stop, lean, sit, without needing to buy anything. The fruit is enticing, the smell from the bakers is phenomenal. The broadband is fast and free. The tailors are plentiful, so we can all enjoy the sensation of different fabrics and well-fitted garments on our skin.
In our future the cocktails are exquisite to drink, my friend. In our future, sleep is honoured and we all get enough of it.
But not too much, as each next day is too exciting to miss.
In our future, our cities are designed for joy and play, children and women. In this future, I walk at night and look at the light, shapes and sounds the dark hours bring, in a way I cannot today. I will leave my home at 3am and walk, think, process, let the world provide answers. Imagine that!
Just walking out my door at dark, and going anywhere, alone, on foot: What freedom!
——
An edited version of this piece first appeared in Missy Mag
Tl;dr: This book will give you perspective and principles to live by. It will give you a framework to understand the madness. You can read it in a weekend. Buy it.
It was a struggle at first to find the words to tell you why I love this book. And now, I have so many words for you.
I’ve been a fan of Ece’s since I stood in front of How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship’s pale blue cover in early 2019. As I picked it up examining the inside sleeve, I noticed the lady at the bookshop till looking at me. I looked back. It’s really good, she said. If you buy one non-fiction book this year buy this one. Something told me I should trust her so I bought it.
I was so enthralled by that book, that I took it to my political reading group and told everyone I met about it. I never normally do this. There is something profoundly different about the way Ece presents her ideas and arranges thought on paper. Whenever I read Ece, I’m reminded of just how narrow the parameters of the conversation are in the UK. It’s like everyone is squabbling inside a constrictive lead box, with the walls closing in even tighter since Brexit and the pandemic.
Her writing, storytelling and analysis remind me of home. Home isn’t a place. It’s a constant straddle, a predicament, a joy. A macabre entanglement of all the things I relate to. It’s dark curly hair, it’s secular, it’s an east-west mash up. It’s sexy and outspoken but often fragile. It’s centuries old, it’s Spinoza woven into Om Kalthoum. It’s logic and reason shouting at religion and extremists, it’s that last bit of meaty sauce in the corner of a serving dish being mopped up with bread under a cloud of laughter and a dim auburn light.
Not since Mark Fisher have I come across such an astute turn of phrase. Mark gave me words to understand, develop, digest. Ece gives me words too.
Together: 10 Choices for a Better Nowis a book about the choices we need to make, an offering of how we form the now into a place we want to inhabit.
It is a practical guide of sorts, but it’s also deeply philosophical. It invites you to ask some big and often tough questions on how you will approach and conduct yourself as you walk through this tumultuous era. This is a rich and soulful work, packed into a little buttercup volume told through hilarious and often poignant vignettes. Like her last book, we are transported from one side of the globe to another from one paragraph to the next. It’s deadly serious, but void of posturing and tired critique. It isn’t afraid to sway from the abstract to our experience of the everyday. This book is very #ACFM. If you like the podcast I host along with Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn on Novara Media, you’ll love this book.
You’re handed ten chapters and ten choices. The first is an appeal to choose faith over hope. My interest was piqued, I settled down with a cup of tea. In the same way that the left’s tired calls for “unity” or “democracy” make me want to die, I’m no fan of appeals for hope. I’ve struggled to articulate why. It just feels weak, passive. I don’t want to be hopeful, I want something much better.
Hope has been worn out. It’s starting to sound like an emotional crutch, Ece says, a cop-out of sorts. She draws a correlation between the rise in citations of hope with a population coming to terms with tragedy and absurdity’s comfortable marriage within national and global politics. This is something non-westerners have long become accustomed to, but the West arrogantly has thought itself immune from. And yet here we are.
In this first chapter, she makes the case for faith as a container for self-esteem, confidence and trust. Her conception of faith is not concerned with gods and theology but rather with human attributes. Faith she argues, is a tonic against the immobilising effects of cynicism. Having faith in humans forces you to believe in yourself and what you’re capable of.
Deep. It took me a good while to think around that one.
Also in this chapter, we are transported to 1991, to a market on the Turkish-Russian border selling communist tat. Ece is briefly mistaken for a “Natasha”, a woman from the fallen Eastern Bloc selling sex, then gets called “sister” by the man when he apologises after realising his mistake. It’s hard to describe to a Western audience all the detail of that encounter, but I know it so well and feel I’ve been there a thousand times. After that incident, everything looks different to Ece, the items laid out on the table become inseparable from the women, the price tags are all visible.
That moment, when an interaction forces a change of perspective, what is it called? When you suddenly become aware of a latent power dynamic, the social relations in the room, and suddenly everything looks different to you, it dawns on you, is everything changed. Or are you? Yes that thing. I’ve not seen this phenomenon described in writing before, why not?
I get pulled in closer. Ece’s Natasha story reminds me of the time a group of guys half my age tried to lure me into their car with the promise of various drugs as I was waiting outside the door of a political meeting. After that, the streets, colours, angles, lighting, Bethnal Green, the London I knew well, were different. That sensation swam around my humours as I mulled upon that evening’s discussion of strategy, ideas and politics. It left a taste. This book is full of such recipes, rarely articulated, the mixing of intellectual exercise with the experience of the everyday floating in oneself simultaneously.
Together is not a book about sexism. But it’s refreshing for an author primarily writing about philosophy and politics not to leave the experience of everyday misogyny out of the page. Women are under pressure to write ‘seriously’ to be taken seriously, ie to masculinise their presentation of life experience. To leave out all the times a man mistook you for a prostitute, whispered something slimy in your ear, or followed you down the street. Ece doesn’t self-edit as so many women do when talking about the state of the world. It’s such a relief to read.
In subsequent chapters, Ece invites us to chose ‘the whole reality’, to befriend fear, to choose dignity over pride, strength over power, attention over anger and more.
I like lists. I’m itching for a list at this stage. So instead of deconstructing every other chapter, here are some of my favourite ideas, concepts and phrases you’ll be treated to from within this book’s pages:
Chickens clucking into the apocalypse
What would a flea market of collapsed capitalism look like?
The self that is revealed in reality is stronger
Turbulence is my natural habitat
That lump in my throat is dignity
Infantilisation of politics
I miss being angry
This era is a carnival of emotions
The global war against the female
Capitalism and the fear of satisfaction
Molasses and tahini
The return to the 20th century as a holiday
Friendship as a cover word for networking
Friendship as commitment, a moral stance
Ignorance has been mobilised to become a political identity
Spinoza wore the same jacket everyday
I don’t want to die feeling like the world owes me
Told you it’s very #ACFM. I yearn to record an episode on each one of those things.
Writing an article is as much standing up from your desk, walking to the window, opening the garden door, opening the fridge door, scratching your head, sitting on the toilet and of course pacing, as it is typing actual words. An awareness of this truism means you beat yourself up less, for failing to stare at a screen for a solid eight hours like a good productive worker when you’re trying to write something. In the same vein, Ece’s writing draws us to all the things that matter, which we’re not necessarily looking at or appreciating when searching for a way out of this mess.
We may not like to admit it, but we all have to some extent been captured by the hegemonic framework for addressing and analysing the global mood and realpolitik. In Britain, we are very, very stuck. As I mentioned above, the terms of discourse are getting narrower and narrower, even on the left. We should open our ears to voices outside this Anglo American mind prison.
———————–
I found myself slowing down as I acknowledged from the sensation in my right hand, that there were only a couple of pages left. I didn’t want it to end. When it finally did and I turned the cover in my hand, a tear landed on my cheek. I found myself striding towards the kitchen and lunging at that bit of sweet pastry from yesterday’s picnic that I didn’t even like. I returned to the sofa and sat with the book in my lap. I squinted up at the spring sun, crumbs on my lips, with the whole of humanity swilling around my breast.
You have a womb. It’s amazing. You don’t have to use it.
Estrogen makes you energetic, flirty and tolerant of male bullshit. It puts rose-tinted glasses over patriarchy so you think ah, it’s not that bad, and go out and get laid. I suffer not so much from PMS, but from the estrogen crash post ovulation when one day I wake up and everything looks as it is.
Whenever you’re told to put others first on exactly the terrain where you’re most vulnerable, that’s patriarchy.
Unless you believe women should be submissive, don’t subordinate your rights to anyone else’s. Always fight your corner, you’ve got to.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. A pro-women left or the left can fuck off.
And, if you tolerate this. Then your daughters will be next.
………………
This time last week I stood in my Alice in Wonderland skirt and red cardigan, one hand on hip and the other pointing a finger up in the air and then in his face. Words tumbled out of my mouth, head fizzing, rage, euphoria, in response to the inevitable catcall-cum-oi-you! as I attempted to cross the checkpoint, beyond which is my childhood home, and our newish neighbour, the embassy of a certain country. I turned my back on the armed men and walked into the road past a cream coloured dog lazing in the sun. I exited the theatre – a woman answering back is always theatre – to the sound of his voice no one passes here without my permission! diminishing into the distance. Once inside, I placed my hands on the table and shut my eyes, adrenaline still pumping boom boom boom under my collar bone. I swallowed. I smiled. Within an hour, I felt bigger. Surprised, I laughed. I’ve walked a little taller, everywhere, since.
…………………….
I don’t want to watch anything featuring women being subordinated, hit, abused or raped. I only want to watch women doing people things. Not enduring patriarchy over and over, over and over. The fact that so many men, and so many women, get off on female subjugation is so screwed up. We don’t talk about this enough.
Twenty years ago I thought porn was fine. I’ve gone 180 on this. Ban it all.
An early memory: I opened the box and inside was a plastic thing with arms and frozen features, eyes. I turned it round, on its back, a slot for a tape which made it go mama. My shoulders sank in my corduroy dungarees as I sat legs tucked under on the living room floor. Later I used the box as a step to reach the sofa. Much better.
I played with cars and trains. I’d assemble a track on the landing and wizz them round and round. I played F-Zero and Mortal Kombat II on SNES. I did and still would, whip your ass with Kitana. Finish; Him.
Why are there so many more You Tube vids of male characters doing finishing move combos on female characters, than the other way round, hmmm?
If I ever was given a Barbie, I’d hold my tongue, fake smiling a thank you, eyes sparkling with thoughts of later. When they’d all left, I’d take it upstairs, cut off its hair, fill the sink with toothpaste and shampoo, dunk, then string them up by the legs. I still don’t like sharing a room with dolls.
I often wonder, if every woman had a choice, how many would have a child? Forty years here and I’m still puzzled by why anyone would want to do that to themselves. Maybe one day, I’ll get it. Or maybe I never will.
………………..
Once upon a time in a land…. There was a tribe. Women were told to shut up, to keep the group together, to not be Other, the bad guys, just say the right words, our words or shut up. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Misogyny is the wing-man of fascism, said Ece Temelkuran
Emperor! Your cloak is just…I mean, wow. Nice try, fucker.
You come in guises patriarchy, oh yes. But I see you.
Witch, Bitch, Slut, ?
Suck my dick said no woman ever.
Nobody is coming to save you. You’re going to have to fight.
The whole victim thing? We’re better than that.
First they come for you on carpets. Then as footsteps on tiles. Then they come for your holes.
When you find yourself staring beyond your reflection, frozen, hand gripping the basin, heart thumping in chest, telling yourself this is OK, this discomfort, I’ll work through this, I’ll learn, it’s on me, it’s supposed to be like this, that’s fuckity fucked fucked.
You know when the voice says this is really uncomfortable, but I shouldn’t say anything then you really should say something.
They want us to stop saying no, you see. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO FUCK. OFF.
They
Want
Us
To
Stop
Saying
No
Slam the door!
In their faces,
Slam
The
Door
There is no glory in submission.
Slam. That. Door.
……………..
A cool breeze. Sun on your face. Let your hair go in the wind. That scalp, breathe.
Hey, you. Woman, I.
You’re the driver, it’s your life. You can do whatever you want, go wherever you want. I love you, I believe in you, I really do. Let’s go.
This article first appeared in the autumn 2020 edition of Dazed Magazine. If you like what you read, help fund my creative work and Buy me a Coffee.
Guy Debord and his mates did not think about coronavirus. A global epidemic was not on top of the Situationists’ list of enemies to destroy. In fact, those 20th-century types took it for granted that you could go outside (and smoke inside). The assumption was that the terrain of struggle, fighting the baddies, was all outdoors. Cobblestones not only make handy weapons, they also free the earth below the more you pick them up. Beneath the Streets, The Beach and all that, shaping the streets one riot at a time.
Psychogeography as a practice means different things to different people, but exploration, freedom and the urban always feature. La dérive, French for drift, was Debord’s term for playfully moving through space and seeing the city scape through fresh eyes. About jolting the pedestrian experience into a new, heightened awareness. I’ve long been a fan of this approach to life and the built environment. I love walking through a city and ending up in random places looking at structures and minutiae from new angles. But these days I think: it was all right for them, free thinkers of late, but how the fuck do I go on a dérive under lockdown in my mum’s house in the suburbs? I was up for this challenge, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
I decided that the overgrown garden would be the wrong territory – its impending bramble scratches would detract from the drifting state I needed to conjure. But it would also be cheating. A dérive had to be urban, full of lines, hard surfaces and shadows. There had to be textures of the man-made variety. Dérives are supposed to be just that, drifty, but for a proper lockdown experience, I had to set the parameters of travel within four walls. Surely I could relieve my pandemic anxiety, my fear of what everyday life would look like in the aftermath, by injecting a little wonder into my everyday locked- down, hemmed-in experience? Who needs a rave when you can trip out on the low-pile living room carpet? It’s fractal, right? If I stare hard enough, I can make it experimental. I was going to make this lonely claustrophobia magical – just you wait, world. I’m a fucking survivor.
At first, the fear of failure and self-ridicule stopped me from diving in. Besides, I’m pretty observant; I notice everything. I’m living in a house I know well and, since I’ve spent so much time inside recently, how would I make it fresh without taking any drugs? By this point I realised I was procrastinating and just needed to do it. I decided I would give myself a good few hours of dériving, so my phone had to be switched off and hidden under the bed. Sunday – after breakfast – I was going to drift.
The moment came, and I was ready for my granola-filled self to let go. I started where I was: the tea towel my breakfast bowl was on. I studied it carefully, ran my finger over its creases. I noticed the coffee stain that won’t come out in the wash, and the lettering in an Elizabethan font: radicalteatowel.com. I traced the edges with my nail and then, suddenly, I flipped over the corner with one quick flick: 100% Cotton. Wash Max 40. Made in the UK. Satisfied by my first excavation, I dropped to the floor next to the dining room table. Here, crouching by a varnished leg, I inspected the carpet beneath me. It’s of a nondescript colour – fuck, what do you call this? It’s kind of reddy, kind of orangey, kind of browny, but too pale to call brick. I put my nose to the floor. I pulled back up. Some threads were lighter than others, which gave it the overall effect from a distance. I extracted a bit of rock salt and flicked it from my path. I was going under the table.
I shoved the 1970s chair on wheels out of the way and got on my back, pulling myself under. The atmosphere was dark and cool. I could hear the neighbours watering their voluptuous hanging baskets through the open garden door, but I felt a world away from them. I reached both hands up and felt the underside. The wood was rough, no – I traced my fingers in circles to check – smooth, just unfinished. Distinctly underside. Functional, but not presentable. I pressed my palms up against the long metal beam that formed the extension mechanism. It was nice and cool. Very satisfying. I stroked it some more, until I spotted some writing from the corner of my eye. I scooted back. WTF was this? Printed in that weird cargo stencil font was 954-306-3 ACCOLADE 12 BY DREXEL 260 – curious! I moved my head to the left a bit and saw blue crayon scribbles over the writing. I felt a pang. A hand flew to my heart. I must have done that when I was four years old.
Enough sentimentality – it was time to move on. I edged myself back out and crawled over to the radiator, Gollum-style. I pressed my cheek against its cool metal ridges. I rolled my forehead over it, pressing my hands against it and pulling my face back slowly, taking in that rusty, dusty smell and slowly opening my eyes. I was horrified. It’s a disgusting lemon yellow. How had I never noticed? I shifted focus to the adjacent wallpaper, inoffensively white. I reached over and felt the bumps of its random lattice, like a million stone henges piled on top of each other. My fingers travelled upwards, my arms followed, then my whole body was pressed against the wall. My eyes popped open. Could anyone see me? No, the net curtains were drawn – phew. I took a quarter-turn to my right to face the glass-paned door to the hallway. It was frosted and peppered with little petit-pois sized balls. I started counting them from the top, letting my finger bounce from ball to ball. One, two, three, four…
One thousand and sixty-four! I collapsed on to the floor, in some experimental dance move. On my back, exhausted, I checked my watch. Forty-five minutes! And I’d not travelled more than a couple of metres. I decided to call it quits, at least for the day. A smell of barbecued sausages had wafted in and I was hungry again. I sat up feeling satisfied. What I just did is art. I just made pottering avant-garde. Between this and online yoga, I may never need to leave the house again. My work here is done. Until the next time.
Not alone in the world 