Other Collective Magazine - Winter 2019

other collective
winter 2019

in this
ISSUE
INTRO
editor's letter
NEWS
state sponsored islamaphobia in china
aarya chidambaram
india & pakistan
hersheeta gupta
FEATURES
south asian artists in hip hop
teja dusanapudi
rohingya refugees
maayez imam
our namesake
ingrid rosenthal
NARRATIVES
dry mango
radhika marwaha
miram madrese
kiana borjian
dear palestine
sama el-sherif
ARTS &
CULTURE
OPINION
our
talia basma
diaspora dysphoria
kimia akbari
my father does not speak american.
saranjit uppal
the rise of the alt-right
shana khan
2


editor-in-chief
Kimia Akbari
internal managing
editor
Niaz Khorrami
copy editors
Christopher Mouawad
Yalda Saii
design editor
Tamara Shoubber
marketing managers
Sama El-sherif
Noor Halabi
the
news editor
Hersheeta Gupta
features editor
Saranjit Uppal
narratives editor
Sanskriti Sharma
arts & culture editor
Talia Basma
opinion editor
Yasmin Torabi
photo editor
Kaitlin Dabdoub
finance managers
Radhika Marwaha
Ahmed Sleiman
STAFF
writers
Aarya Chidambaram
Ingrid Rosenthal
Kiana Borjian
Maayez Imam
Shadee Behbin
Shana Khan
Teja Dusanapudi
 3

Dis-orienting means also to center our stories, not just by looking back, but also highlighting
the present, addressing our conflicts, and simultaneously uplifting our culture. Dis-orienting
inhibits the simplification of our complex identities that bear thousands of years of history. Our
history holds the revolutions our ancestors lived through, the displacement they faced, the wars
they fought. These circumstances took away their opportunity, youth, and life itself, forever altewhy
other collective?
"You come to the United States and the United States begins immediately,
systematically, to erase you in every way, to suppress those
things which it considers not digestible. You spend a lot of time being
colonized. Then, if you've got the opportunity and the breathing
space and the guidance, you immediately—when you realize it—begin
to decolonize yourself. And in this process, you relearn names for
yourself that you had forgotten."
Junot Diaz
Something clicked into place when the title of “Other” came up as a potential name for this
magazine. A necessity arose to address and embrace the "othering" that is done to the narrative,
culture and conflicts of South Asian, South West Asian, and North African communities, the
latter wave of immigrant diasporas that emerged in the United States.
This othering can be as simple as questioning where you stand on a census form and forgetting
what you put down every time the race options pop up. It can so easily become internalized,
urging you to give up and accept that you are in the periphery, dissolving into a label that
erases the truth of your struggles. But once you realize that the power of “other” moves in both
directions, you can embrace this power and overcome the structures that are created to paint
you as invisible.
In our pursuit to embrace our otherness, we seek to “dis-orient” ourselves from the orientalist
lens that has monopolized discourse around our communities for centuries. The concept of
Orientalism depicts “Eastern” culture as backward, exotic, and dangerous. Dis-orienting strives
to dismantle this distorted perspective.
We begin dis-orienting by distinguishing our communities according to their geographic
location, rather than ascribed politicized terms that were curated through a Euro-centric, imperialist
agenda.Terms used today to demonize specific populations and use this as justification for
blocking an entire people from entering a nation, separating families across the globe and waging
wars abroad that displace people from their homeland.
4

ing their trajectory, so that they can plant the seeds for ours. So much labor has gone into this—
for us. So we must grow and flourish. We must pave the way for younger versions of ourselves
by becoming the representation that we always craved, thus enabling the future generation to
bloom.We will thrive once we embrace our state of constantly existing in the in-between and
communicate our complex stories on our own terms. Other Collective strives to be a platform
for the interlocutors of our history, our present, and our future.
I hope that you will feel empowered as you read our work, just as we were empowered
while creating this community.
Thank you to Dr. Noha Radwan, Dr. Amy Motlagh and Grace Weiland for their support and
guidance throughout the process of establishing this magazine.
Kimia Akbari
Editor-in-Chief
special thanks to our sponsors
UC Davis Global Affairs
Center for Student Involvement
5

STATE
SPONSORED
ISLAMOPHOBIA
IN CHINA
THE DETAINMENT AND ABUSE OF OVER ONE MILLION UIGHUR MUSLIMS
Over 1 million Uighur Muslims have been
detained in Chinese internment camps. They have
been subjected to torture, indoctrination, and
surveillance in such centers. Estimates suggest
another two million Muslims have endured some
form of “coercive re-education or indoctrination.”
There are at least 1000 camps; tear-gas, armed
guards, and waterboarding are common tactics.
These camps are just one facet of the Chinese
government’s systematic oppression of the Uighur
people. In recent years, Beijing has released a “list of
forbidden names.” This list includes a large number
of Islamic names, as they’ve been deemed “extremist.”
Communication between Uighurs and relatives
abroad has been cut—those who attempt to
contact family outside of the country are punished.
Citizens must watch state-sponsored television, and
children are required to attend government schools.
Police have confiscated phones and passports. In
Karamay, Xinjiang, those donning “long beards,
headscarves, veils and clothing with an Islamic crescent
moon and star,” were banned from using public
buses while the city hosted a sports event. A local
government campaign,“Project Beauty,” targeted
Uighur women. Project Beauty encouraged them
to remove their headscarves, so they could let
their “beautiful hair fly in the wind” and show their
“pretty faces.”
The Uighur, a religious and ethnic minority
in China, have a long history of resistance against
central Chinese rule. They primarily live in Xinjiang,
an autonomous region in the West of China. It
was not until the 19th century that this region was
brought under Chinese rule, and its relationship
with Beijing has been turbulent since. The Turkish
speaking Uighurs comprise almost half of Xinjiang's
population, which is home to a wide array of ethnic
minorities. Following a temporary declaration
of independence in 1993, there were a series of
deadly protests in 2009 in response to the murder
of two Uighurs. 2014 show a peak in anti-government
resistance, after which, Beijing began to
6

C H A P T E R O N E
NEWS
NEWS 7

implement a series of crackdowns.
Despite ongoing efforts by the UN and other
human rights agencies to gain access to the centers,
the centers still remain in operation. In fact, local
and federal governments are pouring millions into
extensive security measures, including greater
police presence, the construction of more detention
center, and surveillance technologies. The
surveillance of Uighurs have been compared to East
Germany’s police state during the Third Reich. A
Human Rights Watch report details the implementation
of a policing program that collects the personal
data of Xinjiang residents without their knowledge.
Such data was used to target and detain those
considered “potentially threatening.” The Uighur,
even in comparison to other Muslim minorities, are
regarded as “bad muslims,”associated with “violence
and conflict.”
The response emerging from the central
government constructs an image of justified anti-
-terrorism efforts.The government uses reports of
Uighur involvement with extremist groups in Iraq
and Syria, to justify their authoritarian response.
At first China outright denied any culpability in the
internment camps; only in late 2018 did officials
even admit their existence. However, they framed
the camps as vocational training centers, and insisted
upon their practical value to help. Government
officials have argued against criticism by claiming
the camps work to save “these people,” insisting
that the camps were necessary to squash extremism
and global terror threats. Ultimately, the
rhetoric that is frequently employed mirrors that
used by Western nations in their efforts to hide
their state-sponsored Islamophobia. The Uighur
people’s distinct language and culture clearly defy
the Beijing's obsession with “national harmony.” As
such, the blatant violation of human rights suffered
by the Uighur people remains largely ignored, and
no end to these violent atrocities is in sight.
BY AARYA CHIDAMBARAM
8

INDIA &
PAKISTAN
Kashmir has been embroiled in India and Pakistan’s
row for over 71 years. This year saw a rapidly
escalating situation between the two nuclear
powers, instigated by the February 14th attack in
the Pulwama district. Insurgency efforts in India-
-administered Kashmir have been ongoing since
the late 1980s, but violence has begun to rise in
recent years. Thursday saw the deadliest attack in
the last 30 years of the Kashmir conflict, after a
suicide bomber left at least 42 paramilitary police
dead. Nine more were killed in a gun battle early
Monday in the Pulwama district.
The initial attack was carried out by a suicide
bomber who used a vehicle packed with explosives
to ram into a convoy of 78 buses. The bomber
is reported to be Advil Dar, one of the many
young Kashmiri men who have become radicalized
in recent years. Following the attack, Jaish
-e-Mohammad released a video in which Dar spoke
about what he described as atrocities against Kashmiri
Muslims. He went on to state that he had joined
the group in 2018 and was later assigned the task
of carrying out the attack in Pulwama.
Main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi released
a statement on Thursday, stating that the number
of Kashmiri men who have joined the militancy rose
from 88 in 2016 to 191 in 2018.
Since the beginning of this year there have
been 14 gun battles in Kashmir. February alone has
seen six gun battles in which 15 rebels were killed.
The running total of rebels killed this year is 31,
as opposed to 49 security personnel.
Local residents in the Pinglan village said that
three houses and a cowshed were blown up, with
one civilian casualty.
The police released a statement saying that
the civilian was killed after rebels fired indiscriminately.
The statement also identified two of the rebels
as foreigners and one as a local. All residents who
objected to the security operation were detained.
Many fear a backlash from the army after these
incidents. 50-year old Abdul Hamid, a resident of
the area, stated,”several houses have been blasted.
Many young people who were protesting have
been arrested. There is heavy security and we are
forced inside our homes”
There have been multiple revenge attacks by
right wing minds on Kashmiris who have “threatened
to leave or face consequences”
India has been accused of using brutal tactics
to put down protests in Kashmir - with thousands
of people sustaining eye injuries from pellet guns
used by security forces.
Authorities have imposed a curfew in parts
of Hindu-majority Jammu city after an angry mob
vandalised cars in a largely Muslim neighbourhood.
India has further threatened to isolate Pakistan
from the international community, claiming
they have irrefutable evidence that Pakistan was
involved in the attacks. Pakistan denied all involvement
and has asked India to reveal such evidence
and offered to help with investigations into the
attack. India has previously called for global sanctions
against Pakistan due to their alleged support
of Jaish-e-Mohammad militants.
Five additional soldiers have died since Thursday’s
attack. Both India and Pakistan claim the
region near the cease-fire line in full but rule separate
sections divided by a heavily militarised border.
BY HERSHEETA GUPTA
NEWS 9

C H A P T E R T W O
FEATURES
10

OUR
NAMESAKE:
HOW EDWARD
SAID
EMPOWERS
US TO
RECLAIM
“OTHER”
“Other,” a quite ordinary word, means
something completely different to those who
identify with the regions represented by Other
Collective, including West Asia, Central Asia,
South Asia, North Africa, and their diaspora
communities.
To these peoples, “Other” is reminiscent
of forces that box-in our identities. One literal
example is how the U.S. Census, among other
demographic surveys, has caused our innumerable
and diverse identities to be clumped into
one neat category called “some other race.” This
undoubtedly stems from centuries-old, colonialist
perspectives of the East as “backwards” and
“uncivilized.” It defines a region not by its many
unique communities, but by simply being not
Western. Different. Opposite. Other.
A pivotal moment in the evolution of
the “Other” concept came with Edward Said’s
book Orientalism, in which he coined the very
term “Other,” sparking a legacy that would alter
academic thinking forever.
Written in 1978, Orientalism describes
how the East is viewed as “the Orient,” an “other”
world, by Europeans. This divide created by the
West between “civilized” cultures and the many
stereotyped “uncivilized” Eastern cultures served
many colonialist purposes throughout history,
and has continuously been used to justify colonial
and neo-colonial goals. In his own words,
Said writes, “European culture gained in strength
and identity by setting itself off against the
Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground
self.” Said argues that Orientalism functions
as a “system of knowledge” about the East,
a way for the Orient to be acceptably filtered
into Western consciousness.
Moving from his birthplace in Mandatory
Palestine, under British colonial rule, to Massachusetts
to attend boarding school, Edward
Said was subsequently educated in top American
universities Princeton and Harvard, later
becoming a Professor of Literature at Columbia
University in 1963. Said’s education in the
Western tradition caused him to feel some alienation
from his own culture back home. He
wrote in his memoir Between Worlds (1998),
“I found myself becoming an entirely Western
person; both at college and in graduate school.
I studied literature, music and philosophy, but
none of it had anything to do with my own tradition.”
Considered “exotic” amongst his colleagues
who often misunderstood his identity,
Said’s alienation from his own identity grew
until the Arab world became centerstage politically
in the United States during the Six Day
War in 1967. As a result of the Six Day War in
1967, Said did not hesitate to voice his opinions
on political events occuring in the Middle East
and American media’s cultural representation
of the region. Said emerged as a strong critic of
the way Middle Eastern people were represented
in the American media, which he argued was
ignorant of the region’s diverse and complicated
history. The result of which became Said’s
1968 published work “The Arab Portrayed,”
which discusses the stereotypes and misunderstandings
of Middle Eastern populations - specifically
Jews, Christians, and Muslims - in the
media landscape.
Assuming the role of both Westerner and
Arab, Said’s bicultural identity presented itself
in his literature. Said writes, “by the mid-Seventies
I was in the rich but unenviable position of
speaking for two, diametrically opposed constituencies,
one Western, the other Arab.”
In 1979, Said published another influential
piece of literature, “Zionism from the Standpoint
of its Victims,” in which he acknowledges
the Zionist argument for Israel, by tracing its
complex history and connections to colonialism,
in addition to arguing for the Palestinian right of
self-determination. Said’s ability to observe and
recognize conflict from multiple points of view
stems from his bicultural upbringing and gives
him greater latitude as a writer.
Another important argument Said makes
in Orientalism is the indivisibility between the
aforementioned hegemonic structure and all
kinds of academic study such as philology,
history, and political and economic theory. These
tangible and influential areas of study served as
platforms to further Orientalism’s reach as a
tenet of colonialism. Said writes that Orientalism
is “a distribution of geopolitical awareness
into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological,
historical, and philological texts.” Orientalism
isn’t simply a school of thought passively reflected
by society and academia, nor is it these texts
alone; rather, Orientalism is the interaction and
connection between the two.
Said calls out to his readers in the “so-called
Third World” and hopes Orientalism will help
bring to light the power of Orientalist discourse
from the West. He states, “My hope is to
illustrate the formidable structure of cultural
domination and, specifically for formerly colonized
peoples, the dangers and temptations of
employing this structure upon themselves or
upon others.”
No article such as this one could do justice
to Orientalism itself; this piece has only aimed
to highlight Orientalism’s most influential and
far-reaching tenets. Edward Said’s thinking revolutionized
how the world thinks about “Other,”
and forced academia to question the ways in
which they structure their discourses based on
colonial power structures and challenged them
to take a postcolonial approach to all the disciplines
that Said argued worked to advance colonialist
intent.
Edward Said later said in his memoir that
through Orientalism he “tried to uncover the
longstanding, very varied geographical obsession
with a distant, often inaccessible world
that helped Europe to define itself by being its
opposite.” Orientalism became the backbone of
“dis-orientalist” discourse in academia and larger
culture to fight back against the oppressive
history written against Eastern cultures. Other
Collective’s mission statement stems largely
from Said’s push to de-orientalize the prolific
Western view of each region our organization
represents in order to reclaim identities for both
the indigenous and the diasporic communities.
The community behind Other Collective
seeks to provide a platform for those people
to define and express themselves on their own
terms. This exact form of self-determination is
an instrumental part of what Said pushed for,
and we honor the work of people like Edward
Said who paved the way for our voices to be
heard.
BY INGRID ROSENTHAL
FEATURES 11

SOUTH ASIAN AR
So says Anik Khan in his breakout song “Big
Fax,” lounging on cars and rapping about “mixing
up the masla with the militant,” while a woman in a
magenta sari tosses a mango and smiles knowingly
at the camera.
Amassing over a
million views, Khan joins
a host of prominent
South Asians in the
modern rap movement.
“First brown boy to get
it poppin’,” NAV, short
for Navraj Singh Goraya,
is known to brag. But
the roots of South Asian
hip-hop dates back
before NAV’s breakout
song with superstar
Travis Scott, all the way
back to one of the most
popular songs of the
early 2000’s: “Paper
Planes”.
Written and
“Really the worst thing that
anyone can say [to someone
these days] is some shit like:
"What I wanna do is come
and get your money." People
don’t really feel like immigrants
or refugees contribute
to culture in any way. That
they’re just leeches that suck
from whatever. So in the song
I say "All I wanna do is [sound
of gun shooting and reloading,
cash register opening]
and take your money." I did it
in sound effects. It's up to you
how you want to interpret.
America is so obsessed with
money, I’m sure they’ll get it."
recorded for rapper
M.I.A’s second album,
“Paper Planes” currently
sits at one-hundred and
forty seven million views, once nominated for a
Grammy and awarded Rolling Stone’s best song of
2008. The catchy, syncopated beat and simplistic
lyrics disguise a deeper meaning: as M.I.A. herself
says in an interview with entertainment news site
Vulture, Really the worst thing that anyone can say
[to someone these days] is some shit like: "What I
wanna do is come and get your money." People don’t
really feel like immigrants or refugees contribute
to culture in any way. That they’re just leeches
that suck from whatever.
So in the song I say "All I
wanna do is [sound of gun
shooting and reloading,
cash register opening]
and take your money." I
did it in sound effects. It's
up to you how you want
to interpret. America is so
obsessed with money, I’m
sure they’ll get it.".
To argue that the
worldwide popularity of
“Paper Planes” derives
from its subversive rhetoric
would be pushing it, but
M.I.A.’s unprecedented,
meteoric rise to fame as
a person of Tamil descent
cannot be denied. The
rest of her discography
follows a similarly critical
perspective: one of
her most recent songs,
Borders, repeats the phrase “Borders? What’s up
with that,” while the music video displays people
struggling to crawl up barbed, chain-linked gates,
an overarching interrogation of the anti-immigrant
structures across the world. Working most recently
with musical phenomenon Kendrick Lamar and
12

TISTS IN HIP HOP
iconic producer and artist Pharrell Williams, M.I.A.’s
appeal–and that of her politically polarized music–
clearly has not evaporated, her influence still potent
and apparent in today’s hip-hop scene.
Hitting the music scene just two years after
the acclaim of "Paper Planes," rap trio Das Racist
(composed of Himanshu Suri, Ashok Kondabolu, and
Victor Vasquez; the former two of Indian descent)
won accolades for their single "Combination Pizza
Hut and Taco Bell," and later, for their album “Sit
Down, Man.” The music of Das Racist, much like
that of M.I.A's, is unapologetically rooted in diaspora
culture, emphasizing experiences of minorities and
the absurdity of persecution, with songs focused on
the cultural appropriation of accents to song hooks
rapped in Punjabi. Their acclaim, with laurels from
noted music review sites such as Pitchfork and the
Village Voice, is not one made despite their rhetoric,
but because of it. Unlike "Paper Planes," listeners of
Das Racist directly recognize it for its cultural voice,
a voice that ends songs with questions like "What
can brown do for you?/What has brown done for
me lately?"
Das Racist, while influential, was also shortlived.
Breaking up in 2013, its members continued
to amass awards, critique, and discourse across
the globe. Suri went on to create the rap duo Swet
Shop Boys with famed actor and activist Riz Ahmed,
who most recently appeared in Rogue One and The
Night Of, to highly critical appeal. Their most recent
EP, “Sufi La,” follows the trend of contemplative
diasporic rap: Riz Ahmed raps "“I think, what if I was
fairer skinned, had less of the melanin?/Would I get
more work or would I not be worth anything?”
Ashok Kondabolu's brother, Hari Kondabolu,
contends with similar questions with much of
his stand-up, from his recent Netflix special to a
documentary focused on the decades old Simpson
character, or perhaps caricature, Apu. Kondabolu,
much like Das Racist, dissects the spotty cover of
pop culture placed over scenes of prejudice.
Where M.I.A ran, Das Racist was able to walk;
in a post "Paper Planes" world, Middle Eastern and
South Asian artists can build from this platform and
make music that directly reflects and derives from
their experiences, and succeed greatly based on
the subversive strengths of those both unique and
collective experiences.
Between the recognized voice of the individual
and the worldwide pop music of the masses, lies
the diasporic hip-hop of the remaining 2000s.
Hip-hop becomes the bridge between this divide,
the art form which can be a voice of resistance and
persecution in the dominating, sterilized sound
of the airwaves. It is here, in the contradiction of
hip-hop that the ME/SA community has risen and
will continue to rise to recognition. Not yet has
there been a Das Racist that has risen to global
fame, much like there has never been an M.I.A.
famous the world over for her political message
rather than her catchy radio sonics. This is the
world of Anik Khan, and the other rising artists like
him: NAV, Raveena Aurora, Lushlife, and the others,
undiscovered and unknown, but perhaps blasting
songs like "Big Fax" at this very moment. Even if
America never truly “got” M.I.A.’s message, maybe
it’ll get theirs.
BY TEJA DUANAPUDI
FEATURES 13

ohingya refugees:
personal stories of fleeing persecution
14


“I remember my husband staring at me as the
Myanmar Soldier put the gun towards his head
and pulled the trigger,” recalled Mumtaz, a Rohingya
refugee currently living in a settlement camp in
Bangladesh with her only living child. In August of
2018, Myanmar soldiers killed her husband and sons
in front of her before holding her down and raping
her in front of her daughter. Mumtaz is only one of
the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya that have
gone through excruciatingly tragic experiences in
the past two years. She is also one of several refugees
to whom Muhummad Mallick, a Chicago-based
photographer working on the book “Muslims of
the World,” spoke and whose story he documented.
He closely listened to more of her horrific account;
how after the soldiers raped her they put kerosene
on her face and lit her on fire; how her house went
up in flames while her daughter dragged her away;
how they starved for three days before someone
found them and took them to Bangladesh. Mumtaz,
reflecting back on her story, said, “One day you are
with your whole family laughing and smiling and
then the next day your entire family is dead.”
The Rohingya people are an ethnic group from
western Myanmar who have lived there since the
4th century. Islam embedded itself into the community
around the 7th century when Muslims began to
settle in the area. Rohingya continued to be accepted
members of society until the late 20th century.
First, it started with the Myanmar government
discriminating against them by denying access to
marriage protections, citizenship, employment, and
education. The denial of citizenship hurts the Rohingya
most significantly because they are not allowed
to vote, and it leaves a large population essentially
stateless. They also need approval from authorities
to legally get married, which includes having to
show photographs of the bride without a headscarf
and the groom with a clean-cut face, both of which
go against Islamic cultural beliefs and practices. The
government provides little to no investment in the
Rohingya community, resulting in poor infrastructure,
high rates of poverty (currently at 78 percent,
compared to the national average of 37.5 percent),
and a severe lack of employment opportunities.
The recent mass exodus from Myanmar of
Rohingya Muslims in August of 2017 was caused
by the military destroying thousands of Rohingya
villages, forcing nearly seven hundred thousand
Rohingya–including Mumtaz–to flee Myanmar
into neighboring countries. Government soldiers
also planted landmines near the border between
Myanmar and Bangladesh, opened fire on fleeing
refugees, and raped women and girls. According to
Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian
medical organization, the first month of attacks
alone caused at least 6,700 deaths, with tens
of thousands more deaths to follow in subsequent
years.
Mallick spoke to several more Rohingya refugees
and learned about their experiences and what
made each of them specifically flee Myanmar.
Another woman, Roshida, was raped in front of her
husband and six children. When her husband tried
to stop the soldiers, they shot him and killed one of
her children. She was then taken to the paddy fields
by five men and was raped over and over again. She
was left unconscious there for twelve days before
her brother and children found her and took her to
Bangladesh for refuge from the ongoing onslaught
of violence and death. Although she appreciates
the work that the hospitals in Bangladesh provided
for her and the other stateless persecuted refugees,
her whole life has already been changed forever. In
Roshida’s own words, “The day the military came
was the day my world went dark.”
Currently, Rohingya Muslims are dispersed
in several South East Asian countries, number
one being Bangladesh due to its close proximity
to Myanmar. According to Bangladeshi authorities,
there are more than 1.1 million refugees in
the country who mostly live in crowded camps,
conditions that only increase the risk of disease
outbreaks such as measles and tetanus, potentially
harming even more of the Rohingya community. On
top of that, 60 percent of the water supply in these
FEATURES 15

camps is contaminated with water-borne diseases,
adding to the risk of refugees contracting illnesses.
The inhumane conditions that the Rohingya people
are subjected to are a travesty and cannot be overlooked
by the global community. United Nations
(UN) Secretary General António Guterres described
the situation as “a humanitarian and human rights
nightmare.”
Rohingya have also migrated to other countries,
such as Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.
According to the UN, 80,000 Rohingya refugees
reside in Malaysia, while there are still tens of thousands
in the country unregistered for. Rohingya
have even fled nearly 6,000 kilometers to places as
far as Indonesia; however, because they are treated
as illegal immigrants there, their numbers are relatively
small. Thailand is itself a human smuggling hub,
so many Rohingya pass through there as a transit
point, often traveling onwards to Malaysia or Indonesia
by boat or even foot. In every one of these
Asian countries, Rohingya have absolutely no legal
status; therefore, they are unable to work, get an
education, or have access to healthcare. Even the
United States is taking in Rohingya refugees, with
over 1,600 Rohingya currently based in Chicago.
Most of them spent years in Malaysian camps after
fleeing from persecution in Myanmar before resettling
in America, oftentimes having to leave chil-
16

dren or other family members behind, alive or dead.
What has been happening to the Rohingya
people is nothing short of horrific and the fact that
it is intensifying to this day is absolutely appalling.
Those who manage to escape the slaughter and
rape back home live in abhorrent conditions in a
foreign land.
The United Nations has helped move Rohingya
refugees to safer areas, repair damaged shelters
and roads, and provide refugees with blankets,
food, and lights. However, without the help of the
international community and individuals like Mallick,
it is unlikely the situation will improve. Going all the
way to Bangladesh to help the refugees, just like
Mallick did, might be a little too much for a lot of
us, but small donations to the UN can help relocate
refugees to new shelters, provide healthcare to the
refugees, immunize children, and establish nutrition
centers in the refugee camps.
If you would like to learn more about the
efforts being made to help the Rohingya people, or
if you would like to help yourself, visit Islamic Relief
USA at http://irusa.org/.
BY MAAYEZ IMAM
FEATURES 17

DRY MANGO
I sat in our study lounge for the fourth consecutive hour,
when my phone flashed with a message from my mom. As
usual, she was sending me mouth-watering pictures of Indian
delicacies for the festival season – sweets and savory items
alike. I missed home so so much as I chewed on a sandwich
that I had prepared eight hours ago. I wanted to teleport back
to some good food, some Indian food, my mother’s food. As
I tried to focus on practicing linear algebra, my hunger kept
bringing me back to the food topic until my friend offered me
some dry mango.
Now if you’re Indian, you would know that a mango is
the king of fruits. Rightly so, since our motherland is home
to over 1500 varieties of this fruit. So hunger or no hunger,
the offer brought back memories of juicy Alphonso mangoes
I’d eat in India, a raw mango drink Aam Panna, and even my
grandmom’s special homemade mango pickle. And thus, I ate
some dry mango. Fifteen minutes later, I found myself halfway
through the packet and thrown into a ocean of emotions. I’d
just gobbled up half of my friend’s snack in America. Was that
rude? Or worse, was this indicative of one of two “international
student” behaviors that the others talked about?
According to popular belief, international students are
either children of extremely rich parents and thus have extravagant
lifestyles or are studying at an American institution
because their parents have somehow struggled to get them
to this country of dreams for the hope of a better tomorrow.
If you “belong” to the second category, you’ve seldom known
comfort and happiness and you’re very likely to pounce on to
it, just like I’d eaten the mango. In other words, the absence of
the spectrum approach turned something as trivial as eating
a snack with a friend, to an issue of me representing those of
my kind, who account for over a million students at different
universities across the country.
But is it really fair to judge the entire community based on
a few individuals’ reactions? Is it even right to judge students
like us as we make our way through starkly different cultures
in the United States? While all students at the university level
are busy dealing with stressors like midterms, finals and excessively
competitive grading scales; paying too much attention
to our surroundings can lead us to feeling out of place at several
different levels – dressing sense, taste pallets and social
behavior. To top it off, there are occasional comments like “oh
international students don’t care so much about cleanliness
anyway” or “don’t you love how clean Davis is, since you’re
from India?” But in reality, I did care a lot about cleanliness and
I grew up in Dubai, which is cleaner than Davis.
In a way however, my reflective self is grateful to these
comments because they make me more aware of myself and
my priorities. Furthermore, it has taught me to acknowledge,
but then move away, from people who look for such indicators
in their “friends.” Sometimes I wonder how my life here would
be without some of the (very) kind and accepting people I was
lucky enough to meet in this past year.
BY RADHIKA MARWAHA
18

C H A P T E R T H R E E
NARRATIVE
NARRATIVE 19

miram
madrese
first day of “Women in Islamicate Societies:”
Why are you taking this class?
I begin swirling
like the dervishes
my mother is named for: Sufi
plus an “e”
I am jealous of her name -
the way it suits her worried eyes,
sacred face. What she knows
about Islam: not being able to join
swim team after the revolution. I dread
swimming, feigned a shoulder injury
to get out of water polo.
What I know about Islam:
climbing on my grandfather’s back,
the guttural whisper of his prayer
whirling around his spine, images
of birds and men with beards bordered
in emerald and gold. Do you think
my grandparents would accept my sexuality?
I ask my mother. You know
early examples of homosexuality are found
in Islam, in the harems my mother says.
I live in the gold embossed margins of my grandfather’s poetry books,
of my binder paper I struggle to fill
with notes. I have anxiety, so
I am not a history major. Or -
history sends me spiraling
into the recesses of my mother’s name
the photo albums of her mother’s mother and her mother’s mother
who look the way my mother taught me not to:
hair bridging their brows,
above their lips. My body
like history: uninhabitable, scarred,
erased, hairy.
BY KIANA BORJIAN
20


dear
palestine,
Through my eyes I see,
All the horror in front of me.
The sky above a charcoal-grey,
All the smells of body decay.
Under me rush rivers of crimson lake,
All the land begins to shake.
The scorching flames slip and slide,
All my brothers and sisters died.
No heart, no care, no generosity,
All I see is their atrocity.
Bullet after bullet just past my head,
All the children dead, dead, dead!
There is no hope, no life, no light,
All the blood is blinding my sight.
The flooding waterfall of tears,
Can never drown all of our fears.
You see, our child with his rock and life,
Will defeat their soldier with his gun and knife.
Our child will become a man,
Achieving victory on what they began.
Forever engraved in my brain,
All the shouts and cries of pain.
People think we’ve become insane;
No! We are real and will always remain.
And when that happens you’ll hear our cheers,
You’ll hear our eyes as they bleed happy tears.
These tears of joy will wash away all our sorrow,
And bring life back to tomorrow.
We are real, we won’t surrender,
We are real, don’t be a pretender.
We won’t be ignored for we will fight,
For our freedom, for our right.
Peace will come flying in so fast,
We will become reunited at last.
Trees will burst from beneath the ground,
Birds will sing and fly all around.
For no child’s eye will forget.
We will not die anytime yet.
Hand in hand we will stand,
To fight for our home, for our land.
Light will shine through the pitch black,
For life has been brought back.
Everyone will be safe and sound,
In our homes and on our ground
BY SAMA EL-SHERIF
NARRATIVE DEAR 21

C H A P T E R F O U R
ARTS & CULTURE
22

our
You don’t have to like me
You don’t have to like her
You don’t have to like him
You don’t have to like them
Your food isn’t the only food
My food isn’t the only food
Your clothes aren’t the only clothes
My clothes aren’t the only clothes
You can hate the people of my culture
You can think I’m stupid, I’m crazy
You can eat the food but hate the clothes
You can hate the food, but wear the clothes
All I ask is for respect
I don’t need your validation to be someone
Who loves talking about their diverse culture
I do need you to stay open minded
All I ask is you respect my beliefs
Apologize when you’ve done wrong
In return, I’ll do the same
In return, we’ll come together
Your food will converge with my food
Your clothes will stitch with my clothes
Your culture will merge with my culture and
We’ll create something beautiful
Something new
We’ll call it our culture
BY TALIA BASMA
ARTS & CULTURE 23

diaspora
dysphoria
I'm floating by in twilight anesthesia
as Disgraceland overtly stares back
from a distance;
watching the jousting match
Of sufi mystics above polluted clouds
with the cypress-figured lady who gives
scarlet poppies, I’m enchanted.
I envy these midnight archers
I have tried their dance
but I don't seem to awaken
basking in the thirst of hyacinth water,
floating by weakly
in this opaque state,
in deprivation of clarity
summoning more and more tales
that end with a question
as crescent slashes of annihilation
forbid the quest to liberation
and yearning yearning yearning,
ever so eternally
aware of my oblivion
then—
swimming thrashing clashing
as I drown
leaving nothing
but silent screams of pleading
and yearning
BY KIMIA AKBARI
24

MY FATHER
DOES NOT
SPEAK
AMERICAN.
My father does not speak American.
His mother tongue is Punjabi, the five rivers,
where there is life and growth and a place where his
history belongs and is cherished and refuses to die –
My father does not speak American.
He is from water and earth and the harvest, he
uses his hands to build and break apart and create
again, he finds the worms friendly and the snakes in
the fields old friends.
He falls from his bike onto the dusty ground and
gets back up, laughing and crying, as the sun blazes
down over his head that nourishes his home.
He walks past the river every day and sees himself;
he sees his life fall behind him, sees his heritage disappearing,
he doesn’t see anything, what does he see?
What is left?
Now he stands in the cold grey city and waits
for the water that will not come back to him. He is
locked in a zoo with the world stopping to watch him,
this creature that performs tricks with a turban tied
around his head in colors they don’t understand.
He looks but cannot find his home anymore. He is
watched. Hunted.
Lost.
My father does not speak American.
But he came here to be understood, to have a chance to
listen and learn and grow.
To fly
Far and wide,
And begin again.
He came to feel safe in a world that promised him one.
But how you can you settle for a cement world when your
lungs have breathed in rivers all its life?
My father does not speak American.
And he is drowning every day because of it.
BY SARANJIT UPPAL
DIASPORA ARTS DYSPHORIA & CULTURE
25

THE RISE OF THE
ALT-RIGHT
how social media and bigoted
ideology is creating a
dangerous environment for
minorities.
On January 22nd, 2019, four young men, Brian
Colaneri (20), Vincent Vetromile (19), and Andrew Crysel
(18), along with a 16-year-old whose name was withheld,
were arrested for planning a terrorist attack against the
Muslim community of Islamberg in Upstate New York.
Founded in 1980 by a group of Muslims hoping
to live a modest and devoted life, Islamberg is a small
enclave in Upstate New York City largely comprising
Muslim-Americans. It is home to about 200 predominantly
black Muslim-Americans, and is the headquarters
for the Muslims of America Organization. Though
hoping to live a peaceful and devoted life away from
the distractions a big city like New York City brings,
the citizens of Islamberg have recently been subjected
to an inordinate amount of Islamophobic attacks.
Over the last 15-20 years, right-wing media outlets
and conservative groups have incessantly alleged this
community is a terrorist training camp, citing no evidence
for their contentions. In 2015, Robert Doggard, a congressional
candidate in East Tennessee, pleaded guilty to devising
an attack on the small town. Doggard has ardently
justified his actions claiming the residents of Islamberg
had been planning an attack against New Yorkers.
"Those guys [have] to be killed" (Doggard, 2015), Doggart
said during one call. "Their buildings need to be burnt
down." However, officials have continuously failed to find
evidence supporting his claim. Doggard pleaded guilty
and is now serving twenty years in prison. A year later, The
American Bikers United Against Jihad’s “Ride for National
Security” paraded through Islamberg to protest Islam. The
biker’s Facebook event page read “Heavily armed, trained,
and ready for violent jihad against innocent Americans,
[Muslims] prey on our prison populations and vulnerable
youth to recruit, but the FBI’s hands are tied” (The
Daily Star, 2016). And once again in 2019, the citizens
of Islamberg are victim to another heinous hate crime.
Police allegedly discovered the suspects in possession
of 23 legally owned rifles and shotguns, as well as
makeshift bombs packed with nails and black powder.
These men had been planning for over a month to intricately
devise a method to carry out the assassination of
a community of Muslims. “If they had carried out this
plot, which every indication is that they were going to,
people would have died” (Phelan, 2019), Greece Police
Chief Patrick Phelan told reporters. As of February 5th
2019, Crysel has been released on bail due. His attorney
claims he is “autistic and had no plans of harming anyone”
(WBNG, 2019). The other men still await their trial.
But what fueled these young men’s ambitions
in carrying out such a violent and horrendous act?
Vincent Vetromile’s shocking social media profile leaves
growing concern for the rise of the alt.-right. Vetro-
26


C H A P T E R F I V E
OPINION
OPINION 27

mile is a fervent Trump supporter, and an ardent advocate
for gun ownership. His past tweets show a history
of harboring anti-Muslim sentiments as well. “KILL
THEM ALL and nobody will be left to attack us” (Vetromile,
2016). Vetromile declared in 2016 regarding
Muslims. “The Koran tells them to kill us so they’re all
GUILTY,” He again tweeted. Much of Vetromile’s social
media activity was devoted to raging about Muslims,
calling Muslim immigrants “rapefugees,” and arguing
that there was “a good reason to get rid of all Muslims.”
Vetromile was also an active member of a private
chat platform called Discord. With over 150 million
members, this software is designed to facilitate communication
through video-game communities. But in
recent years, this platform has been a popular gathering
space for members of the alt-right white supremacist
groups, neo-Nazi communities, and Islamophobes
alike to organize and converse. Members of
the alt-right parties used Discord in 2017 to organize
the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Time after time, conversations among these platforms
have eventually lead to group polarization and
heightened feelings of racism and white supremacy.
The alt-right’s presence has been rapidly escalating
in the past few years. White supremacists have been
doggedly targeting communities of color claiming they
are “dangerous” or “plotting America’s demise” when in
reality, these communities pose no threat whatsoever.
What really poses a threat are these Americans’ extremist
ideologies. In December of 2017, William Atchison,
a former student who was 21 years old at the time of the
attack, killed two students at the Aztec High School in
New Mexico, then committed suicide. His online activity
included posting pro-Hitler and pro-Trump thoughts on
an alt-right website called The Daily Stormer under usernames
such as “Future Mass Shooter.” And similarly, in
October of 2018, Robert Bowers killed eleven individuals
at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. He too was a member of a
social network called Gab which was deemed “far-right safe
haven” for neo-Nazis. Bowers also had a history of posting
anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler thoughts to the website.
The reality is that the biggest threat to Americans is
not the drug dealers who will come to America through
the Mexican border. It is not a refugee family fleeing Syria.
It is not a Guatemalan family marching a thousand miles to
seek asylum in America. Building a wall, restricting immigration
and deporting “illegal” immigrants will not make
America safer. The real threat to Americans is the rise of
alt.-right terrorist organizations who are targeting minorities
with the aim of cleansing America of its alleged danger.
28


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OPINION 29

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