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Emerging Author of the Month: Zarmina Rafi

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Tell us about yourself.

I could say many things about myself but I think the most significant event of my life so far has been the move from Pakistan to Canada. I was born and raised in Pakistan, and have lived in Canada for about fourteen years now.

While the experience of living in, and having access to two different worlds is and has been rife with possibility, I do not think it is a situation to be romanticized. For me there was a lot of fracture in the experience, and I am dealing with much of the aftermath now. What I have gained is not insignificant, but what one loses in such a move is something I have been thinking about.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

It’s a piece that was recently published in Filling Station, and I guess it’s a mix of fiction and memoir. Among other things it contains in it a sense of play (from a stylistic point of view).

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

I always loved to read so I think there was a desire to make something similar to the things I enjoyed reading. When I was about eleven or twelve I would read up to three Sweet Valley High series books on a daily basis.

While the books were not literary in nature, perhaps they instilled in me an appreciation for character, drama and plot. I took Writer’s Craft in high school and then too I desired to become a writer. It’s the only thing I had wanted to be. I also liked analyzing texts in school. There was some joy for me in reading what could be between the lines.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

This is a difficult question because I have been moved by different writers and by different kinds of writing at various stages of my life. I was quite young when I read Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, and I thought it was fantastic, because of its characterization, and for its realistic portrayal of a city teeming with so much. I like J. M. Coetzee’s work for its precision and clarity, but also because at the end of any of his works one feels as though she has traveled across highly complex physical and psychological terrains. I also like works that are layered and complicates genre, here I’m thinking of writers such as W. G. Sebald and Roberto Bolano. In the last two years I have been reading a lot of avant-garde poetry (Canadian and otherwise). There are some great poets coming out of Vancouver. Probably all of the poets in Coach House’s Prismatic Publics: Innovative Canadian Women’s Poetry and Poetics, I found have been inspiring to me. I think Gertrude Stein is great. T.S. Eliot was a big favourite earlier on. I’m sure I’ve missed some other names . . . Oh yes, Duras, I like Marguerite Duras very much. I also like Nella Larsen from the Harlem Renaissance.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

In writing and in art, I would like to be as close as possible to the truth of what I see in the world, and/or how I see the world. By truth I don’t mean a universal truth. I mean a truth that is truthful to the core of my being in how I receive the natural world and the material world. I think the job of writers/artists is to collect images and experiences and sensations. Sometimes we sift through these to get to the kernel of a story, and at other times we expand upon these to create an accumulation or texture out of seemingly disparate chunks.

As in any other activity that I engage in, in writing too I aspire to be exactly like my own self, which means that at all times I must be able to and open to move, prod, find, question or wonder upon any object, person, place or thing of interest. I do not wish to impart wisdom to my readers, there is no wisdom to be imparted. It’s all in being curious, in the world and on paper.

How and when do you find time to write?

Even though I have been writing for the past ten years, it’s only in the last two years that I have spent much of my spare time writing. On average I work 4–5 days a week, and when I’m not at work, I am writing. I rent a space where I go to write and having that dedicated space has been a big part of getting the work done.

The Girl in the Apartment

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There is a little girl who lives in an apartment in my head, and I look after her. The windows of the apartment are my eyes, so she sees what I see, and I keep her safe. So when someone looks at me funny on the street, I send her some schnauzer puppies, because we love schnauzer puppies. And when another girl calls me ugly, I hold up a mirror so she can see how pretty she really is. And when my lover hits me, I give her a hug, because she needs a lot of kindness.

But then I get mad. Why should she be sheltered, while I bear the world’s bullshit? Why should she get to be whole, while I crumble around her?

So I evict the little girl from the apartment in my head, I throw her and her tiny possessions out to the curb, and she doesn’t fare well without me. I pass her on the street one night, begging for change. No one notices her because she’s so small, but I see her right away. And I feel bad, so I give her some change, but then I take it back. Because while I love her, I hate her too. As I love and hate myself.

Moth

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She was a moth
Silver and ivory. 
The smells of recipes filled my nose. 
That’s how I knew she was home
That’s how I knew she was well. 
I’d get out of bed 
No hesitation
And fly like her, to where she was. 
Debussy was my favorite alarm clock.

She’d fill my belly
Prepare me for the day. 
When I was young,
I never wanted to go to school
“Staying with you would be better for me”
I’d say. 
Sometimes she gave in. 
We’d dissect the dictionary
Collect rocks along the shore. 
Make visits, recite shows 
She understood me.

I woke up late one morning 
Too late.
The house didn’t scent
But solitude and silence 
Created a void. 
I became waxy and old
As I flipped through
My dictionary searching 
For a word to fill it. 
She was gone
And I was alone for once 
Stoned with ash.

Eight years old
I remember
I came home to the buzzer
Echoing in my ears. 
Tortellini in the oven. 
Debussy on the player. 
Valse Romantique in F minor. 
My mother dancing in a golden apron,
Beside the window. 
The view of the mountains
Outlining her steps.

She was always a natural woman. 
Never afraid to reveal 
Her organic well-being. 
She believed in a covert current 
Excreted from the earth.
An upward motion of energy
Through your body, to the stars. 
“That’s why we dance.”
She said. 
“There is no motion that isn’t moved by something.” 
Her crystals and garments
Flew from side to side
Living entirely with gravity.

She collected crystals
She collected stones of all kinds
She would spend hours 
Under a light
Examining the curves 
Looking for some kind of galaxy
Within them.

She wore opal crystals 
That day in the kitchen. 
My last faded memory of her. 
I can’t even hear the 
Sound of her voice anymore. 
Only disjointed squeaks
And moans of my mind searching
Itself for another memory. 
I can only remember the sound 
Of her crystals hitting her body
When she danced. 
Living entirely with gravity.

On Seeing My Last Name

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the landlady asks if I’m Slavic 
and I say yes, at least 
the last name is. And she says 
Slavic women are the best—
at what exactly, I can only guess. 
But I’m not really. Slavic, I mean. 
It was my grandfather’s name, my father’s 
father, and he died when I was six. 
He was Latvian, rural born, fought 
in the war, went to England first, 
and came to Canada for the land. 
Mostly, I recall 
that he would walk his fingers 
across the kitchen table 
to make me laugh when I was small. 
The landlady hands me the keys 
with a secretive smile and a wink 
as though we’re inextricably linked 
by some murky trail of shared history. 
I smile back, even as I realize how little I know 
of the intricacies of this past—
just a vague point on a map, 
a few handpicked details 
and this, 
the passing down of names.

Children of the Revolution

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To you 
The children of the revolution 
I offer my deepest sympathy

To the bell-bottomed 
Love-beaded 
Flower-children 
Who died on barren fields 
That oozed socio-political decay

When all you wanted was
To light your truth-filled pipe 
To breathe in 
And watch your own mind 
Playing with stars

To Kodak a Soho thigh 
And fill a worn out knapsack 
With the sufferings of a dying world

To lose yourself 
In existential nothingness 
And make love 
To the world 
Under a psychedelic sky

What an absurdity 
That you should forget 
Where you are 
And that here 
Such things 
Are almost 
impossible.

This is poem is a sample from Andrea Thompson’s earlier years.

Strip Down and Face Me

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Strip Down and Face me 
Shed all those defences, those misconceptions, those memories that hold you back 
Those were in the past, we are the present 
Strip Down and Face me 
Smudge off all that make-up and lipstick 
Take off all those expensive threads you wrap yourself around so neatly 
Peel off any last layer of skin you got on 
Strip Down and Face me 
Show me the core of your soul 
The ideas and beliefs and aspirations you revolve around 
With a blindfold on, your sight is temporarily disabled 
Feel my breath on the back of your neck 
The way the warmth works its way down, making your spine melt, melt into me 
Hear my secrets gently pouring down your ear 
Smell my perfume: Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue for Men 
Ten Thousand kisses have been laid upon you; I’ll try my best to break that record every time 
With every person I’ve encountered 
I take away from each experience 
And in return, I leave behind a piece of me 
Find me in the grains of time 
You can find these little pieces and find me, fix me 
Map out my whole life story 
Or better yet, why don’t I do it for myself?
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