Carnage
by Arij Elmi, republished here, an adjacent feature by a member of the adjacent.furniture community and sounding board member.
It’s the morning of the Christchurch mosque shooting and I’m on a train. The service manager asks whether I requested the Muslim meal.
Her question sends a chill down my spine.
She has outed me. I wear no hijab and have no identifying marker. Only my meal is Muslim.
She meant to use the word halal. Instead she made the food, that which is consumed, Muslim. I look up the word consume and find it to mean: “to do away with completely; to destroy.”
Yes, I will have the Muslim meal.
My client narrowed down her choice of destination to New Zealand. She explains that New Zealand is a peaceful place that has no natural predators. She forgot about the Muslim. The Muslim lies at the bottom of the food chain. The Muslim is a mutation that needs to be corrected for. The bats and seals hope to be predator free by 2050. The Muslim envies the beast for it’s hope. The bats and seals are protected from extinction. The flesh of the Muslim is halal for all to consume.
The last time I wore the hijab in Toronto was in Ramadan. I usually slip it off after prayer but I decide to keep it on for the bus ride home. My body is filled with panic. There is a man standing between me and the exit. Everyone seems unpredictable. I can only breath when my feet are firmly on the green earth. Only to do it again the next day.
I spend the day after the Christchurch mosque shooting lying to a group of Syrian refugees. I’m there to teach them self-defence. Yes, you can defend yourself. Yes, you are entitled to hope. Yes, even if someone acts on their impulses you can survive. And the world will mourn you. And the world will cease its consumption. And you will remain.
My grandpa and I watch Sally Field in Not Without My Daughter. His takeaway? One day the white man will ask you to leave the country so be ready. He isn’t wrong. There is the Muslim ban. The call for us to return to our shithole country. Where shall we go grandpa? To the Somalia of your memory? It no longer exists. There is no space for us.
No home for us anywhere. We are unsettled. Here is as good as anywhere to await our fate. Here is where we patiently await our end as carnage.
Arij Elmi is a registered social worker and doctoral candidate in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She is a podcast producer for Weird Times (Hard Feelings Mental Health) and the Apology Project (The Tessellate Institute).
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