I
Fatima finds herself unable to breathe. She’s so stressed, so frightened and so panicked that she literally can’t breathe. It’s astounding to her, not only terrifying, but stunning. How can this be, how is this happening, how is this real?!
This is really happening; this is really happening.
Her heart beats like a galloping stallion, her palms wetting like steam in a boiling pot. She breathes in, then out, trying to center herself, trying to make it all make sense.
She’s alone in her grandmother’s room. The door is locked, both as a way to keep her in, but also as a way to keep them out and away from her.
Her prison and her refuge.
The them in question are Fatima’s parents, and as we speak, her mother is pacing outside the room, heaving and fuming. Fatima can hear her mother’s curses, but really, they are pleadings. For you see, only God above can protect Fatima from her mother’s wrath, so may the lord have her daughter in his graces.
Fatima’s father is seated, ignoring his wife’s fire as he reads the email on Fatima’s laptop again, then again, then again.
Fatima’s degree has been revoked, and she has been banned from her university. It’s amazing how elegant and sterile the writing is, yet its havoc is earth shattering. That’s 4 years down the drain, countless sleepless nights not just from Fatima but the entire family, that degree didn’t purchase itself now.
He reads it again, hoping that the words will magically rearrange themselves, hoping that this is all just one big misunderstanding, but the miracle never comes. Fatima’s mother begins to pray as her own miracle is crumbling, if God does not answer, she will break that door down herself and enact a kind of justice the University couldn’t even dare threaten on Fatima, despite expelling her.
The most tragic thing Fatima ponders is the fact that the University likely doesn’t even care at all. This is all just business as usual, just another errand some campus secretary had to complete before moving onto the next task. It’s all posturing and pandering, for they have expelled her for doing the very thing they were teaching and encouraging her to embrace.
Wasn’t this the whole point of education, of critical thinking of a university degree, especially in the humanities, isn’t it about defending humanity?!
How can she have attended countless lectures celebrating the supposed social justice heroes of yesterday, activists and revolutionaries who fought for civil rights, justice and humanity. Then when she practices what she preaches, standing arm in arm in protest with some of her professors even, the institution they serve, the institution that claims to value such activism, bans her and revokes her degree?!
How is this happening, how is this real?
Is she missing something?
Was it all a lie?
Fatima isn’t oblivious about the world she lives in, this hemisphere of western civilization. She isn’t blind to its rotten roots drenched in blood and tears. She isn’t surprised that her government is trying to deport the student that encouraged her to join the movement he was organizing and stand up for her beliefs and values – values, mind you that this same country supposedly prides itself in upholding.
That hypocrisy doesn’t shock her. So much no longer shocks her anymore. I mean, if standing up and saying genocide and the killing of infants is a bad thing, and this gets you in trouble, can she really be surprised?
If standing up and decrying the indiscriminate, mass slaughtering of thousands of women and children in one of the tiniest and most densely populated places in the world gets you to be called a woke terrorist feminazi. Can she really be surprised?
If calling for peace, for a ceasefire, for a simple end to violence on “all sides” though if we’re being fully honest only one party controls all the resources and can actively drop bombs the size of multiple atomic explosions in scale, if even that is entirely unreasonable, can Fatima really be shocked?
Nothing should shock her anymore, especially after almost 2 nonstop years of the systematic destruction of an entire people.
Yet, when the institution that enlightened her and encouraged her to never stop standing up for such truth is the one now betraying her, and actively silencing her… that shocks her.
I mean, what’s the point at that point?
II
Because of Fatima’s activist actions and participation in a pro-peace protest at her university, she now finds herself banned with a now useless degree. If she was being fair, the degree was already professionally useless, I mean it’s an English degree in this economy, she thinks to herself. Thanks to the University, she can’t even pretend it means anything now. It isn’t just her either, this action clearly proves that the university never really cared in the first place too. Why teach about radical writers and thinkers, men and women who spoke truth to power and opposed oppression and tyranny in all its forms, hailing them as heroes and intellectual champions of humanity. Yet when your own students follow in those same champions’ footsteps, you silence them and ban them.
And for what, so that a few podcasters and personalities on social media calling your own students “sheep infected by the woke mind virus” can feel validated? Or maybe you’re more interested in appealing to the wanted war criminal leader who is overseeing this genocide and has thus earned his charge, declared so by an International Criminal Court. I mean what’s the point, what do you even stand for, did you ever stand for anything at all, thinks Fatima, frustrated as she mutters within her mind.
She thinks back to those same heroes and heroines of truth her university so valorizes and worships. If they were to walk on this earth today, waltz across the libraries built in their names, stuffed with their masterpieces like shrines to mortal deities. Would the university crucify them too? Wouldn’t their convictions have led them into the very same protest she was in. Since when was advocating for peace a violent act?
Maybe the university didn’t like her fellow protesters’ methods, but if that were true would they have banned Martin Luther King too? Wasn’t he their lion of peaceful protest, the right alternative when compared to other more radical options at the time. Fatima remembers having to read MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail in her 1st year. She remembers how her professor emphasized the effective organization of the civil rights protest, how MLK spoke of the point of those protests being to incite creative tension in hopes of encouraging change, how he spoke against the moderates of his day who condemned him of his actions seeing the peaceful protests the university now worships as the right approach, as in fact being too aggressive back then.
When MLK marched for civil rights in his day, he earned the ire of his nation, being the most hated man in America. And here in the 21st century, this supposed age of progress, Fatima and her peers dare to be inspired by him, to oppose tyranny everywhere, in order to defend liberty everywhere. They put his reflections of inciting creative tension into practice. Using the right approach, that of peaceful, civil protest in the name of peace and what do they get? The same ire and hate from the very people that claim MLK as their hero.
Make it make sense!
Just like the moderates of MLK’s day, the university’s crucifixion of Fatima and her peers communicates that they have gone too far, that they have become too aggressive. Too aggressive in what, Fatima wonders, in putting the theory they have been taught into practice – was that not the point?
Does Fatima now have to address them like MLK addressed the moderates of his day, painting vivid images of black people being lynched, burned and killed while being told they had to be patient for their salvation. Isn’t that what Fatima and her peers are doing now with their protest chants, painting images of mothers and children dying, children! bombed in the cradle, nothing but dismembered bits left, buried under mounds of rubble!
Is it all just about aesthetics to the university, do they just want images and symbols of progress with no soul, does her university truly want an informed, critical and outspoken cohort. The most frustrating thing Fatima dwells on is that she probably knows who that campus secretary is. She probably exchanged niceties with her at some point, maybe at some random campus event. They probably bonded on their shared desires and beliefs of the importance of education and critical thinking; skills they both felt were under attack. And now here they are, Fatima and her friends having now become the target of such attacks.
The university that enlightened them, having pulled the trigger.
It makes her stomach turn.
III
Fatima’s mother now knocks on the door, her clenched fist pummeling on the wood. Fatima’s mind is in overdrive, terrified of the wrath about to be unleashed upon her. Her spirit of activism and revolution may be dear to her, but to her mother and father it is seen as naïve immaturity. Even getting to do that English degree had awoken her mother’s fury. All the sacrifices they had made to bring her to this country, all the blood and sweat and tears to grant her the opportunity for a better future, one of privilege and comfort compared to where they were coming from.
And what does Fatima do? She throws it away, critiquing that privilege and being an “activist”, protesting in solidarity with a people she has no attachment to in some distant foreign land.
Fatima has tried to communicate to her parents that these aren’t just some foreign people. That her parents and herself have more in common with these people when compared to the people of this supposed promised land. Her parents’ suffering has stomped out any such idealisms however, for they have been molded in the furnace of doing everything they can to survive, and they know full well that one does not bite the hand that feeds them, no matter how much Fatima tries to ask them what its other hand is doing, and where that food is coming from.
As long as you’re the one eating, her parents retort, you keep quiet and do what you have to do. At least her parents are honest, she thinks. The hand, however, will steal from another and declare itself righteous, for this promised land was built on stolen land. This dream was built on the carcass of another’s, and such fates are not relegated to ancient history, it is happening right now, with those other people, from a distant foreign land.
IV
The door finally opens, and Fatima is confronted by her mother. Her mother’s face steams of anger and her eyes are drowning in disappointment. This isn’t just a sorrowful fury brought on by Fatima’s actions, however. It seems, despite her desperate desires, God has answered Fatima’s prayers and has instructed Fatima’s mother to not touch her. God’s messenger is Fatima’s grandmother, and she enters her room, her granddaughter terrified, and her daughter yearning to give Fatima something to be terrified about.
“Leave us be now, I want to speak to her… alone.”
Fatima’s mother obeys, letting go and returning to her husband, curses simmering in her mouth, but not releasing. The door shuts yet again, and Fatima now finds herself alone with her grandmother in her grandma’s room. The room feels ancient, a relic of a bygone era filled with heirlooms and keepsakes of yesterday. There are framed photos everywhere, of young faces that Fatima does not recognize, for she has only encountered them in their later years, they could as well be different people entirely.
Such is the case of one photograph, one most treasured by her grandmother, set right next to her bed. Its an image of two figures, a younger grandma, and a man, young too. Fatima has been informed it isn’t her grandfather, instead, this man is her granduncle, one she never got to see, for he was long gone once she’d been born.
“You remind me of him you know.” Fatima’s grandmother says, seating in her rocking chair.
“He’d even be proud of you right now, you and your little stunts.”
Fatima struggles to discern if her grandmother is her salvation, or an even worse fate than her mother, such has always been the case with grandma.
“He was just as young and dumb as you are, and if you’re not careful you’ll end up just like him. Your brothers’ kids will only be able to see images of you at this age, for you’ll never get to grow old, just like him!”
Her sudden spite elevates Fatima’s heartbeat as she fears God has answered the wrong prayers.
She then runs for refuge in the photo, trying to find peace in her younger grandmother’s smile. She looked so happy in that photo, her eyes practically shut, wincing in joy.
“It wasn’t just him that was stupid, I was too, that’s where the grin is coming from. We all thought of ourselves so highly back then. Like we were some kind of heroes, really, we were just fools.”
Grandma’s sentence trails, weakening.
Fatima then takes a chance.
“What happened?”
For this, Fatima earns a fiery stare, one so set ablaze it looks almost identical to her mother’s fury. But then it weakens, subsiding and then subduing as her grandma looks at her with what looks like tears welling up. This wound may be old, but it never healed.
V
“We were children. Children who grew up surrounded by heroes. The world looked very different back then, especially when it came to change. We all truly believed it was possible, we all truly believed that if we just fought hard enough, we could build a better world. Peace, equality, freedom, all those fairytales, we actually believed we could make them real. Your uncle was a true believer, and he was ready to go all the way. He wasn’t satisfied with just marching and shouting, he didn’t just want to raise awareness, to let his fairytales be known, no. He wanted to make them happen, for he believed no one was going to just give them to him, certainly not the ones who were profiting and benefiting from his suffering. It wasn’t just about his suffering either, he wanted to fight for everyone, he wanted a world where no one suffered, from the east to the west, from the north to the south, all corners and crevices of the earth needed to be free. He truly believed in this, and sadly, there were many others just as crazy as he was. They called themselves revolutionaries, and their revolution was global, international even, an international revolution!”
Fatima’s brow piqued as she was familiar with these international revolutionaries. She’d done some university readings on them; their struggles and exploits having incited the popular imagination. Many writers saw them in the vein of the French Jacobins, or the American revolutionaries, or more closer to their own time, the Cuban liberators of the 50s.
They had in fact been conceived of on that small island, founded by the beard clad, cigar munching guerillas that deposed the Cuban dictator Batista, earning themselves the awe of the world, all the way into the heart of the mother of all empires. This was the same empire that had benefited from Batista’s regime and spent every waking moment desperate to overthrow these so-called heroes of the people, while still somehow romanticizing them. Maybe more so in Fatima’s day now as opposed to then. The revolution itself had changed now as the rose-colored glasses would soon be taken off.
Yet in that revolution’s golden age, the International Revolution, or INTERO as it became known, was spearheaded not by a beard clad guerilla, but rather a heroine who’d joined the fighting in the mountains, capturing the world’s imagination as western female writers likened her to a modern day Joan of Arc, instead now fighting for an end to imperialism, and she meant imperialism everywhere. Luisina Vivar’s INTERO organization outgrew the small island, setting seeds in the center of decolonization efforts throughout South America, Africa and Asia. INTERO assisted the revolutionary struggles, providing aid, medical, and more famously, or rather infamously based on your side during the cold war, military support.
The INTERILLAs, or international guerillas became romanticized freedom fighters appearing on many anti colonial fronts, recruiting globally, Vivar desperately tried to create a world in which anyone, from anywhere could be a revolutionary –
“And you uncle fell for that communist snake’s lies!”
Fatima’s eyes popped, visibly shocked. It was because of those “communist snakes” that her native homeland had been liberated from colonialism. They were the only ones that supported decolonization. Fatima blinked away the surprise however, for this wasn’t the first time vitriol had been thrown at the liberators of yesterday, especially from her parents and elders.
Many of them saw those same liberators as the reason why they had fled their homelands in search of better opportunities, for what had the liberators done with this newfound liberation, they became new oppressors.
Fatima could respect this, and even shared in the resentment, yet she could also see the fragility of this supposed liberation. The emancipation of a single cog does not bring the system to a halt, if anything, it forces the cog to surrender on its own, for its liberation cannot survive on its own.
No man is an island after all, this applies to nations and peoples as well.
True liberation is the emancipation of everyone, everywhere! If all cogs are liberated then the system cannot function, and together, the cogs can build a new system, one that serves them all.
Anything less is survival of the fittest, and in the jungle, the imperial lion reigns supreme, so you either adapt or die.
Be oppressed or be the oppressor.
It doesn’t have to be this way however, and this is what Luisina was fighting for, the liberation of all cogs, yet many didn’t see the vision, then, and now.
Luisina wouldn’t live long enough to see herself become a villain like some hoped her to be, instead dying a martyr on the field of battle.
Yet her legend, and tales of her INTERILLAs lived on, seemingly much closer to home than Fatima ever knew.
“Your uncle joined in with those fools, fighting in some foreign land for some foreign people he didn’t even belong to. And then he died, I don’t even remember where he died, and for what even. Just a beautiful life wasted. So much potential for good, for love, dead in some ditch in the middle of nowhere!”
Fatima’s grandma now tears up, her voice breaking.
VI
Fatima can see the message here, the warning.
Don’t be like your uncle, one you never got to meet because he was just as foolish as you.
But Fatima doesn’t agree, she can’t agree.
How does her grandma not see it, how does she not realize that her brother didn’t die for nothing. He died for something, he died for someone, for love, meeting his potential fully, undeterred by fear, and not being afraid to bite the hand that feeds him when it was biting many others who didn’t deserve it, no one deserves to be bitten!
Fatima can’t pretend to know why he did what he did entirely, but if he is as much like her as her grandmother believes, then it is because of love, a deep love for humanity and a fully realized potential for good that he sacrificed himself.
Fatima now finds herself withholding a smile realizing her grandmother was her salvation after all, for she has inadvertently inspired and encouraged her. She has shown her that revolution is in her blood, flowing like destiny itself. Back then, her uncle lost his life in pursuit of that dream, that of a better world, and if all she loses is a degree that the institution which granted her didn’t even believe in, then she has no excuse but to keep fighting.
Fatima is then reminded of the people she is fighting in solidarity with, in her own way. Their martyrs are part of these long line of revolutionaries, ready to sacrifice everything for the liberation of everyone, for in their own words…
If we must die
Let it bring hope,
If we must die,
Let it be a tale
One to inspire revolutionaries everywhere to never stop fighting, regardless of what the hand throws at them, and what the hand takes away from them. This is an old fight, one that must forever be fought, it is just our turn to march, like it was Fatima’s uncle’s turn to fight back in his time. Now his tale brings Fatima hope and despite the terror of her mother, the disappointment of her father, the fear of her grandmother, the betrayal of her institutions, and the repression of her government, she will continue to march and fight. She will make her own tale and bring hope to those who come after her.
Fatima now becomes an INTERILLA!
END
18/Mar/25
Leave a Reply