What is the point of this life? What is the point of any of this?

Photo: The sand dunes of Wadi Rum. Taken by me.

I have been thinking a lot about my physical body lately. 

You must bear with me, a lot of the writing you will see on this platform might seem circular, the same sentiments and thoughts finding different pathways to end up at the same beginning or end. My thoughts are circular so…my writing too, is circular. 

Anyway. 

I have been thinking a lot about my physical body lately. 

In my last post, I wrote about feeling othered, a feeling that has haunted me all through my life - sometimes brought upon by my family, sometimes brought upon being just born as someone with a different coloured skin in a country where the majority is light-skinned. I do not say this as a criticism (at least not right now). This is the context of my life. 

Whenever I’m moving around in Singapore, I often feel really conscious about how I look. Maybe it’s because I am taller than the average Singaporean, then there’s my skin, then there’s my hair, and more recently, my no-hair sitch. Even more recently, the rolls of skin and fat on my hips, bum, thighs. The two nails on my toes that are blackened and dead. My skin that is constantly dry, ashy. If you didn’t know, dry brown skin looks more ashy and dead than dry non-brown skin. 

I am often looking at myself in the mirror and wondering - wow. What is going on here? Sometimes, I recognise myself. I have a particular way of sitting, with one leg crossed over the other, chin on hand, slightly hunched, limbs relaxed. When I catch myself in the mirror sitting this way, I smile with recognition - ah, there I am. There is Arathi. Other times, the person staring back at me is a stranger . Who is this, she who has so much flesh, so little hair, whose eyes seem to carry this deep, unspoken sorrow. 

Who am I? 

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I have been travelling through the Middle East for the past two weeks. It is my first time in the region, and it is a trip that feels so precious and prescient in timing. The Middle East, as we know, is once again thrust into deep turmoil. 

The Western media, as it is wont to do, is narrating a version of what is happening. Like most narrators, it is unreliable. Gaza is burning. We get glimpses of this through our phones, where we are seeing events unfolding in real-time on social media. We are witnessing stories of children being murdered incessantly, caked in soot and sand. We are hearing the cries of mourners, discombobulated through our speakers. We are witnessing the extent of human cruelty and brutality. The only thing that determines who is witnessing, and who is experiencing brutality is the random event that determined our place of birth. Needless to say, #callforaceasefirenow. 

Being in the Middle East, and in particular Jordan, which shares a physical border with Israeli-occupied West Bank, is surreal. I see how the lands melt and fold into one another; sweet yellow sand dunes, craggy peaks of mud-brown mountains, a delicate shimmering in the horizon, the same damn sun setting in the distance, painting the sky cotton candy pastels. What separates me, walking sedately on a road on this part of the land, and what is happening several hundred kilometres on the other side of this *same* land, is a nebulous, man-made border and even more nebulous state-determined ideologies about who deserves to live and who deserves to die. 

Hmmm. 

What is it the need for this oppression, for the need to exterminate some bodies, while letting others live? Who gets to decide this? Who is right? 

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When I am sitting in a restaurant in Amman, I look around me and see women. Lots and lots of women. I am not sure what to think about this. My impression of the Middle East (and I am aware that I’m using a term that is so reductive for a region that is so vast and diverse) has been unfortunately influenced by the Western narratives I have grown up on. I do not expect to see women being ….well, this free.

Anyway, so there are so many Arab women, proudly taking up space. They are of all shapes and sizes; they smell amazing, carry the most beautiful handbags and wear the most expensive shoes, and look like they are doing their best to have the time of their lives. Some of them have fair alabaster skins and bright blue-green aryan eyes, others look more like me, with swarthier skin and deep browns and reds in their eyes and hair. They are always together in groups, sharing a softly smouldering shisha, the air around them redolent with their sharp scents and the muted, smokey smell of watermelon-mint. 

In all of their eyes, a strange, despairing sadness. 

Perhaps this, more than everything else, feels like a homecoming. I recognise this sadness. The sadness in me surges up to meet their sadness. It wants to ask intrusive questions of them, to ask them how they came to be. And where they want to go. Whether their faith keeps them contented. What does happiness look and feel like in their lives. 

These are, after all, questions that I ask myself too. 

So it may seem baffling to many when I say this, but when I am in the Middle East, I find that I can breathe better in my skin. In some ways, I really let go - slouch, unlock my jaw, have a bad hair day, wear a lot of makeup, wear no makeup at all, wear clothes that show off all my new curves or wear clothes that completely hide them all.

Here, I am me, but also, not really. Maybe it is more accurate to say that here, I am a messier me, the me that continues to ricochet in this strange liminal space of #selflove and #selfhate. 

===

I am sitting in the hotel lobby in Amman and I am watching the television. It is showing an Arabic news channel that is reporting on what’s happening in Gaza. The images are relentless, and devastating. A child, whose head is smashed open, blood flowing everywhere, the red of his blood like the red of mine that is slowly and steadily coursing through my veins. Another, a mother wailing about losing her family in a bomb strike, the sound coming straight out of her sternum that holds her heart broken to smithereens. More pictures of rubble, smoke, sand, sad faces, angry faces, pleading faces, faces, faces, faces. 

My eyes are filling with tears. 

Seeing these images that I’ve actively consumed for the last five months, I remind myself that to sit in safety is a blessing in itself. To have access to clean water and fresh food are blessings manifold. To live in a space where I am physically safe, is a gift like no other. To have a body that is functional after all that it has gone through, to have a caring and loving community, to not be exterminated by state - these are all things that most of us take for granted. 

And we cannot! We must not! 

We must acknowledge our privilege, we must continue to remain uncomfortable of it, we must continue to believe that what we assume to be the status quo is in fact, not; that we must continue to work and fight for a world where all of us can be free, can be safe, can have homes, can go to bed at night not wondering whether we will be dead tomorrow because we have been attacked. 

If this is not your prayer, then I ask you, what is the point of this life? What is the point of any of this?