Ayisha Siddiqa, Of Earth
Lahore, Pakistan
2023, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Climate Hero: Ayisha Siddiqa, Free Fossil University
It demanded an innovation of her.
Inconsolate, blazing with the full force
of its grief…
And the tulips — dumb,
opening like prayer — perspired
underneath their obvious god.
***
It demanded a reverence she did not give.
Twice framed by red and white borders, here,
on the cover of TIME. In the composition,
a portion of her face is superimposed on ‘TIME’
Ha! I think. She is ahead of it, ahead of her time —
the furnace of metaphor burning bright enough to
sting my literal face.
Time. How the word turns in my head with a thrashing.
Time, the strange mechanics of it.
How hordes of men swarm
glass towers in their finest suits and
make it run out.
***
There, yes. Right there. Yes! An opening.
I can see her seeing it, feel it
burning in her eyes, just now.
She sees the dull machinery of
their words at work, lubricated by
truisms and mineral oil.
She is obviously unimpressed —
How is it, I wonder,
to stop a room full of men
from cutting the world at its
rind and licking away, ravenous,
at the abundances found there.
There is an impatience about her look,
as if to say: when the time comes,
our histories will be ruptured too,
our people will drown too,
our corner of the earth will
weep just the same.
Born in my homeland, just a few hundred kilometres
from where I live, she gives counsel to the General Secretary
of the United Nations, organises protests attended by
tens of thousands of men, women and children.
And isn’t it easy to forget us? she seems to say.
But, bound by fate to a great love for the Mother,
she is the answer to her own question.
***
Bless the child thirsty in a shanty home.
Bless the harvest. Bless the hand that picks it.
Bless the earth. Bless the one who fights for it.
The one who enters rooms indifferent to our pain
with the weight and toil of that pain.
I will not let them forget us, she seems to say.
Reflection
Reflection
A recurring source of inspiration in writing this poem — I call it "ignition" — was the way in which the Global South is conveniently framed out of the conversation taking place on climate change, and how activists such as Ayisha Siddiqa are making it a hot-button issue. International media fails, almost comically, at highlighting the disproportionate (and devastating) scale of impact in places such as Pakistan, which emit a minuscule amount of carbon in exchange for the brunt of its debilitating harms. Art, then, is a way to reckon with what cannot possibly be reckoned with — it is a way for me to arrive, through edifice, into artifice. Art as politic first, and then as refrain; that is what excites me, and that is what I want to put out into the world. There is something magnificent about having a world (a poem, a narrative) where mine is the only characterisation that stands. I am allowed in my poetry to portray an iconoclast such as the legendary Ayisha Siddiqa, unwavering and unhindered by the lobbyists and institutions of power bringing ruin upon us, our oceans, and our earth. I am allowed to read them for filth — thus, anger, in conjunction with Ayisha Siddiqa’s advocacy, is what defines my poem. I first discovered her work when I saw her on the cover of TIME magazine, just radiating power. And so that first memory of her flickers throughout the poem; since then, she has taught me that doomism will not save us alone. We all have a civic duty to urge our leadership to take climate change seriously. This is a strenuous effort that requires at least some hope. So yes, beyond the frustrations of being a citizen of the global south, there is also a spark Ayisha ignites in me. She is a woman hailing from a part of the world so easy to disregard (my part of the world!), and yet she does not allow it to be ignored in the relevant forums — that’s truly something to learn from.