My name is Syar (the y is pronounced like an h), I'm 24 and currently in Europe.
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My friend Lutfi took a nice picture of me that I really liked while we were out with our other friends, and then I used it as my profile picture on Facebook, and then Cass made an incisive comment, and then this happened, and now I’m being insufferable and sharing it everywhere.
Tonight I asked myself the question, “Who are your male role models?” just to see what my answer was. I said my dad (he is the best person) and then I stopped, and in the long pause that followed I quickly realized that pretty much all the influential, inspirational people I’ve encountered in my life and that have impacted me, my philosophies and my identity, are all women. And I wanted to list them all because it’s 4am and I want to.
My desk represents how I think I’m so much cooler than everyone at work. No one’s buyin’ it.
My sister got me a fox necklace for my birthday that just arrived today and it’s gonna be a new friend for my fox ring!
I’m Syar, I turn 24 today, I have both my bedhead and my ratty pajamas on here and I drew numbers on my hands in permanent marker for props to pull faces with. Happy birthday to me!
For the month of July, I attempted to write a journal entry on my blog every day. I managed 19. Here are quotes from most of the posts:
Her big sister was kind of a mess, and it felt too early for this little girl to become one too, not when I thought I knew what she should avoid. Every year the same old day
And what am I going to do with this sentence exactly, this perfect sentence some other writer thought of first? All he wanted was for nothing to ever change
Are these the days I will remember, bullet holes in the heart, ten years from now? What do I care of ten years from now? A truant absentee
All Your Stupid Questions
- Why do I even want to be a writer?
- Will it be worth it?
- Could I survive the alternative?
- Why can’t I sleep like a normal person?
Scooping out the seeds/becoming a hollow whole
My wedding will keep happening, and my friends will laugh when I call it practice. Sometimes you just want a change you know? It bordered on lace
An incomplete list of the good things that happened in June. The passing of June
I mean, firsts are weird things, and first exposures are not necessarily things you remember, cause once you push open that door and dive into it, it gets buried under everything new you learn, everything else you find out about. Entry into
I still believe in the power of humans making art, making narratives, talking and listening to one another in such a human way as to elevate the ugly, to redeem it, to make sense of it, to punish it, to punish ourselves (for the society we’re a part of, for the atrocities its members commit), to ultimately turn it into something usable and good. Given what we were given
She made matching curtain sashes that were difficult to store, they kept falling loose like restless snakes. You pause before you speak, unsure of what to say
Nothing feels as frantic as the sudden jammed feeling of all your naive youth pushed up against the walls of your adult frame. The liquid tilts inside your head
She asks after me, as we watch the car pull out, and her hands swat my shoulders absentmindedly. The careless affection of a mother of five, a mother of my teenhood. A familiar shade of mosquito dark
I had forgotten the ubiquity of the call to prayer. The reliability of this collective pause button. Discordant
I imagine every country, no matter how small, has a large glittering diamond of a hard city their youth could escape to, could be swallowed by. Don’t make me turn this car around
I try and remember that it is “graduate” and not “student” now. Forms unfilled
Reading news of the companies and politics and government of the country you do not care about, the country you openly loathe and resent and feel trapped by, the country holding a pillow over your face, it feels like. The peeling urge
I once drove away with my shoes on the roof. A red coat of silver
The two rules I’ve made up for myself is drink more water and don’t use the computer on the bed. I am half-succeeding at both. Single words
I saw an Urdu version of this yesterday* at the Globe Theatre for the World Shakespeare Festival happening here in London, and it was FUCKING ACE. There was dancing right from the start, and just before it began Nadia and I realized we knew more about this particular play than we thought, because of 10 Things I Hate About You.
*Put on by Theatre Wallay
(via illustratedladies)
Everywhere on the Internet, I have small chats and big chats with friends I have missed, the heavy weights in my heart, and I tie them to my balloons, kites to carry me forward. The lake in Neuchatel is an excellent crystal ball, the sun and stars through my bedroom window an excellent television, and the black cat tiptoeing along a high balcony an oracle, oblivious as I watch it on my own tip toes from the kitchen window. My heart has begun the process of missing the present.
If ever I write anything more substantial than my jumble of blog posts and tweets, I am sure I will have to dedicate it to Cass, because whatever she does when we communicate seems to unlock whatever it is blocking my hand from the keyboard (the title of this post belongs to her, a parenthetical statement made in our Skype chat yesterday).
I think it’s hard to be in your twenties and go into Europe to travel without at least a small toiletry bag of expectations. There’s a lot of myths fed to people my age and maybe as a young woman who grew up almost entirely in a small country that most people still don’t know about (it feels like), I bought into this Europe myth more than most.
Did I come here thinking it was going to change who I am, that travelling in Europe was going to give me great, juicy anecdotes and adventures - neat and whole narratives I could peg to my self worth, that I could repeat to friends and strangers who will then become my friends because hey, I went to Europe and had all that fun! Yeah, I did. I tried to pretend I didn’t for a while, but I did, I did. I was hoping for a boy, I was hoping for skinny dipping, I was hoping for unbridled joy so big it blew out any of my inherent moroseness and introspectiveness. Even if just for a few significant moments.
This is a lot of “whining” from someone who’s lucky enough to have the resources to travel here and stay here for three months, pretty much no strings attached, with the support of a sister with a pretty good job and stable home life within which she has carved me a space. And after all this is over, I go home to my father’s house, another safety net. I know! Oh my goodness, I know! I’m just in my twenties and I have emotions coming out my ears, forgive me.
So far, there’s no boy, I haven’t yet swam in a body of water (naked OR clothed) and my joys are smaller, deeper and inexplicably hard to explain. They’re not gems I can pour out of a bag so everyone else can see them sparkle, they’re just mine. It’s easier for me to write when I’ve had a few grey days, when I’ve had a streak of duvet caves and dark moods so the stuff that comes out often makes it seem like that’s my whole life, that’s my whole existence in this faraway, wonderful place where I can see the Alps from my window.
So what has “Europe” been for me? I shouldn’t start this list now when I’m still on this trip, but so far I know it is gratitude, excitement, fear, boredom, guilt, awe, humility, melancholy and a constant itch. It makes me speechless, it triggers my camera finger, and it makes me repeat myself. It makes me keep trying to articulate.
Things I’ve missed since I’ve been abroad:
1. My mum’s birthday.
2. The birthdays of three of my best friends.
3. Mother’s Day.
4. My own graduation.
5. The familiarity of my own face.
6. An uncountable number of unarticulated things.
