19/03/23
Some notices:
I’ll be appearing at the NSW State Library this Tuesday the 21st, as part of Fresh Takes, “a seasonal showcase of the best new pieces in publishing”, at 6pm. Tickets are free.
Next month, my third poetry collection Non-Essential Work (UQP), will officially enter the world. I’ll be launching the book with Bankstown Poetry Slam, details to come. Also in April, I’m featuring at Queensland Poetry Festival, in An Evening With: Joelle Taylor and Huda the Goddess, among other events.
Finally, in May, I’ll be at the Sydney Writers Festival, hosting The Rhythm of the Word, a performance night featuring Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Anthony Joseph, Joshua Whitehead, and Madison Godfrey.
I spent the past week in Brisbane.
I didn’t have much choice in the matter, Hannah had work there, and we couldn’t afford not to go, despite burying my grandmother only days before. I at least got to spend the morning after her burial with her, in the corner of Rookwood Cemetery; her grave, its rocks, surrounded by yet more freshly dug holes, in what is the last available space in this bristling city of the dead. The morning after is important to the newly departed, to let them know they are not forgotten, to ease the loneliness of their state.
And then we were in the sky.
I have a strange, strained relationship with flying. I have a phobia of heights, and every flight is a period of intense anxiety, the certainty that this absurd means of transportation is going to be my doom, so I spend the hours in fits of prayer and reading, whichever gets me out of my mind fastest. I occasionally enter a place of calm through this fatalistic certainty, a total submission to God that is difficult to replicate, although I suspect this is only because the part of me that wants to die is finally at ease—this must be what it feels like not to be at war with yourself.
A week after my father’s death, I was on a plane to another country, and after my uncle’s death, and now their mother’s, as if to stay still in the aftermath of their loss was impossible, or to smother my grief in fear by launching my body into the clouds, and so there was this element too, of an accidental tradition; me, my ghosts, and God.
We landed back in Sydney yesterday, and as we trudged off the tarmac and into the airport, I heard my name called out, the ring of disbelief laced in it. And there was my Hulla, my dad’s sister, waiting at a gate for her own flight to Perth. We kissed and hugged. The last time I saw her, she had been wailing on the ground of the filled grave, and though a week had passed, it seemed as if she’d just come from there, her mascara was smudged, hazy ring of blue and black. “What are you doing here? Where have you been? You vanished after the funeral.”
Yes, I had, and I explained part of why but not all, and she told me of the seven days of mourning, how beautiful it had been, and then she asked me to help fix her phone, because it wasn’t working, she couldn’t call anyone and had been frantic with worry. I confirmed that calls weren’t going through, played with the settings for a minute, then fixed it. My aunty’s eyes were wide with wonder, wet with tears. “Look, how crazy is it you were here just when I needed you? Do you see how Babbanne is looking after us?”
This is the other part that comes with flying after funerals, the inevitable return to earth, the weight of memory, the bruised glory of love. Of course I knew Babbanne had intervened already with the angels, of course she was looking after us still, she has never known another way to be, and nothing so simple and small as death was going to change that. I have proof, too, but none that I wish to share. This will have to do.
Salaam,
Omar