Remembering Floyd, Azeezat and Barakat (I)

It felt as if our world had suddenly become an empire of Beelzebub- of violence and deaths, of horrific events and egregious occurrences. Ours is no a world where right is wrong, where truth has become false and one in which men and women of honour and nobility have no say and voice in how […]

It felt as if our world had suddenly become an empire of Beelzebub- of violence and deaths, of horrific events and egregious occurrences.

Ours is no a world where right is wrong, where truth has become false and one in which men and women of honour and nobility have no say and voice in how their affairs are run. What a strange world this has become!

It was definitely a highly unsightly scene to behold. There, he knelt. He knelt down with one of his knees. He knelt, not on the ground nor on the pavement. Rather, he knelt on his neck. He knelt on George Floyd’s neck. He knelt on his neck for upward of eight minutes and forty seconds! Who could have dared to engage in that kind of atrocious act? Who could have dared to kneel on the neck of his fellow human being with that kind of apathy and disdain for life? Definitely not a Muslim. Not a believer in the existence of the Almighty. Not a believer who is aware of the pendency of the day of reckoning. Definitely not that subject who knows that he shall be called to account for his action and inaction here on earth in the hereafter.

Meanwhile, George Floyd continued to plead for his life. He kept pleading for mercy. He was shouting “I can’t breathe!”. In the meantime, Chauvin, the racially chauvinistic American policeman, the agent of the ‘most advanced country’ on earth, continued to kneel on his neck. He was doing all of that in a style. Yes. Plato it was who said – ‘if you must go mad, let there be a method to it’. Chauvin had a method for the murder he was committing that day. He did it in  style. He put his left hand in his pocket while exerting pressure on George’s neck in order to snuff life out of his body. Yes. Chauvin knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to kill another black man.

Yes. Killing black bodies – men and women- by white police officers has since the last decade and more become a pastime in America. For over three centuries, to be black in America is to carry a burden, to live in the abyss of deprivation and oppression, to die young, to live in poverty and penury; to be afflicted with COVID-19 disproportionately in comparison to others, to ‘kiss death’ for failing to turn on the full light of your car. To be black in America is to be a metaphor, or a signifier: a metaphor for hatred, a signifier for abomination.

Thus, wherever and whenever the black man appears on the street in America, he experiences loathsomeness and abhorrence. He feels he is occupying a space where his subjectivity is abominated. He knows he is unwanted even in that very space which is legally and constitutionally his and for the other.  He knows death is nearer to the black man in America than life. His circumstance is reminiscent of the female body, particularly the hijab bearer. To be a woman and adorn hijab today is to invite attention of the other and the liquidation by the other of the other.

Thus while Chauvin was busy squeezing life out of George Floyd,  agents of darkness were equally busy ‘perfecting’ their plans for the murder which they had concluded upon long before then. Thus, as soon as she found herself in their midst, they descended on her like the predator on its prey.

Like lions in the wild, those agents of darkness ‘feasted’ on Barakat’s body, defiled her chastity and violently sent her to the great beyond. Perhaps that was better for our unfortunate sister after all. It was better that they made a martyr out of her; it was providential that they relieved her from the scar and the pain of remembering the incident of being gang-raped by subjects whose bodies are destined for hell. those whose blood veins are full of bile and vile and those whose hearts have become putrid due to the absence of illumination from the Almighty.

They gang-raped her not by chance but out of a free choice; the choice to take away somebody else’s soul; a soul that they cannot give nor replace.  But we never knew that this was prefatory to yet another roguish incident in which human blood would be spilled with relish.

Yes. She was a Muslim sister. Azeezat was dutiful to her Creator; she was faithful to her husband. She had lived her life in complete obeisance to the Will of the Almighty. She was a mother-in-waiting; she was pregnant. Days after the month of Ramadan, she never knew that her end was near. Nobody knew her term on earth was up. Nobody could have known that; nobody could have known that like Barakat, she would soon host agents of darkness; that she would be sacrificed to the gods of infamy and larceny; that she would be martyred sooner than later.