#shafiq28
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, Sabila.”
“Areh jaan! You want her to grow up without any idea about her background, her history, who she is?”
“Backgrounds and history - that’s for the past! You have to see the future. See what is best for her now.”
"What is so wrong about speaking to her in our language? Teaching her what we learnt? You think all those years at the Cadet College were a waste?”
“Even the Cadet College is no more, Sabila. It was all destroyed in the war - there’s nothing left!”
“The war for our culture and language! And we won!”
"With everything destroyed - all our infrastructure, our leaders, our intellectuals, dead and gone! Our kind, gone!”
"They cannot be all gone. I know it. I know our kind are still around. It’s not like all Bangladeshis were killed off in the war.”
"Our kind? Our kind either escapedor died! No two ways about it! And let me tell you - those that escaped? I know for sure that they don’t follow the old ways anymore.”
“‘Old ways’? OLD WAYS!? You think all those years of jadu that we learnt are “old ways”?! Cheech! Maybe maa was right…”
"Right about what?”
“Right about you thinking we are just stupid casi. No respect for our heritage. Maybe I should have listened to her.”
"Sabila! Don’t be ridiculous. I have a lot of respect for our heritage. I just don’t think that trying to teach it to Ayesha now would be useful for her. I mean - firstly, who is she going to speak Bangla to?”
“There are other Bangalis here too, you know. You moved here specifically because of them. And I’m sure there’s at least one jadukara in there.”
"Ya, they move here, with their big names and big jobs and big degrees, and what happens? They become cooks! or taxi drivers!”
"Is there something wrong with being a cook or a taxi driver?”
“NO! It’s just…they also learnt so much about their culture and what not, but look, the Bilatis, they do not care. I don’t want our Ayesha to suffer because the Bilatis don’t care.”
“Then why not just move back to Bidesh then?”
“Did you forget already? Everything is destroyed. What can we return to? We would suffer. Ayesha would suffer. You want Ayesha to suffer? I got us here for a good life, you know. Lucky for us she is born here, makes things so much easier I think.”
"So you want her to grow up like a Bilati? No concept of her culture at all, is it? Pagol na ki tui?”
"No no no! Sabila, shuno na? It’s not that I want her to not know where she comes from, at all. Na na. I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to learn Bangla right now.”
"Then how is she supposed to learn our literature, our stories, our songs? How is she supposed to be a good jadukara?”
"There are magical people here in Britain you know. With that one school…Hogwarts, I think? Some top people from there. It’s not like she will never know how to perform jadu.”
“But she won’t know how to do it like us! How is she supposed to cast a good tantramantra if she can’t even speak Bangla properly? How is she supposed to make good potions if she doesn’t even know the names of the ingredients? How, Faizal, how?”
"She will learn Bilati magic! It’s not hard, look - Lumos - see, there is light.”
"Where did you get that wand from?”
“Oh, one of my friends took me to Diagon Alley the other day. Said all the Bilati magicians have wands. We should get one for Ayesha. Oh, and you too.”
“And why should I have to learn Bilati wand magic? We didn’t need this faltu wand business back in Bidesh!”
“Things are different, Sabila. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, ha na?”
"Oh, so if the Romans all jump off a bridge I have to jump also? Chagol!”
"If I am a chagol then you are a goru - so stubborn.”
"DON’T YOU DARE FAIZAL…”
“Hey hey, I am only kidding, areh. Sabila. Look. I’m not banning Bangla from the house. You want to tell her all our stories and literature and what not, you can. What I am saying is, for her sake, I think we should talk to her in English. And teach her English. Do everything in English.”
"And what happens if I put ek Bangla khota in my sentence? What, it will be all ulta palta hai hai ki hoisei?”
"One or two things, ok. But we have to be careful not to mix up so much. One of my cousins, he is a child psychologist, he says that sometimes the children get confused when they hear more than one language, so they keep quiet. They don’t know how to say anything! But if you pick one, then they learn easier.”
"Your cousin, ah? You Shafiqs, you think you know everything.”
"You wanted to be a Shafiq. Couldn’t stop talking about it even before we got married. Thought we had the good life.”
"I didn’t think having the good life means we have to forget ourselves!”
“We don’t have to forget ANYTHING! We can teach her Bangla later, when she’s older and can master one language. Then she won’t be so confused. But Sabila, look - even if she knows Bangla now, who is she going to practice with?”
“Us…”
“Yeah, and that’s it. You think the neighbours can talk to her in Bangla? Her school teachers? Her classmates? They will only make fun of her.”
"Oh, you think Bangla is funny?”
"No, I think the Bilatis are stupid. But I don’t want their stupidity to cause my children trouble. So we have to adapt.”
“Then what about the jadu?”
"Again, where is she supposed to cast tantramantra or find ayurveda ingredients? Where is she going to find the sahitya books we loved so much? For all we know, it’s probably banned here. One strange word and whoosh - off to Azkaban. The Bilati Ministry did ban flying carpets after all.”
"Faizal, I don’t think the Bilatis will send a child to Azkaban.”
"Oh you don’t know. I’ve heard them punishing children very strictly for doing magic in front of Muggles. Just small things, but oh - Statute of Secrecy!”
“Listen to you! You sound like a Bilati already. ‘Muggle’, what a lousy word. As if they are like a pig or something.”
“That’s how the Bilatis see jadunai, really.”
"WHAT? Are the Bilatis really that backwards? Are you sure you want to raise Ayesha in this place?”
"It’s better than our other option, Sabila. At least here she still gets a chance to learn some jadu, even if it’s different than ours. Maybe she can be a magical scientist and put our jadu and their magic together. I don’t know. But back in Bidesh? She will be nothing. Worse than here.”
"I’m still not sure about this.”
“I know you’re scared, Sabila. You loved sahitya so much. I do too. That is why I loved you! Your passion for the language, so evident in your eyes! But it will have to wait, jaan…just wait a few years. Just wait till she is old enough to be able to appreciate it. You try to tell her now, she will forget.”
"And you’re sure talking to her in English only and giving her only English books is okay.”
“It will prepare her for a bright future. We don’t want her to suffer because she doesn’t know the language. People are already going to criticise her because she is not White like the Bilatis. Even though she is born and raised here. The less hurdles she has to jump through, the better.”
“So we have to hide ourselves because the Bilatis are close-minded?”
“I know, I hate it too. But that is how the world works. Not everyone can fight fight fight. That is why we did not go to the war. Sometimes we have to take care of ourselves first.”
“Spoken like a true Bilati.”
“I’m just saying the facts.”
“sigh…”
“Sabila, I promise you, if she wants to learn Bangla, once she’s ready, you can teach her. You don’t have to hide anything. You can tell her about the old days if you want. All I’m asking is, just do it in English. Until she’s old enough. OK?”
"…ok, jaan. I hope you’re right.”
[[source:Rajiv Ashrafi
OOPS WRONG BLOG LET ME TRY THIS INSTEAD
written to commemorate International Mother Language Day, which in turn commemorates the Bengali Language Movement. It’s a pretty huge deal in Bangladesh. thanks to serkestic for the reminder!
a lot of this is based on a true story: I was primarily raised in English because my family figured I would not have any avenues to practice Bangla while being raised in Malaysia. English is my first and primary language. I speak rather broken Bengali and can’t read the language. This project is as much about me trying to reclaim what I’ve lost as it is me having fun with fandom.]]
Post link
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, Sabila.”
“Areh jaan! You want her to grow up without any idea about her background, her history, who she is?”
“Backgrounds and history - that’s for the past! You have to see the future. See what is best for her now.”
"What is so wrong about speaking to her in our language? Teaching her what we learnt? You think all those years at the Cadet College were a waste?”
“Even the Cadet College is no more, Sabila. It was all destroyed in the war - there’s nothing left!”
“The war for our culture and language! And we won!”
"With everything destroyed - all our infrastructure, our leaders, our intellectuals, dead and gone! Our kind, gone!”
"They cannot be all gone. I know it. I know our kind are still around. It’s not like all Bangladeshis were killed off in the war.”
"Our kind? Our kind either escapedor died! No two ways about it! And let me tell you - those that escaped? I know for sure that they don’t follow the old ways anymore.”
“‘Old ways’? OLD WAYS!? You think all those years of jadu that we learnt are “old ways”?! Cheech! Maybe maa was right…”
"Right about what?”
“Right about you thinking we are just stupid casi. No respect for our heritage. Maybe I should have listened to her.”
"Sabila! Don’t be ridiculous. I have a lot of respect for our heritage. I just don’t think that trying to teach it to Ayesha now would be useful for her. I mean - firstly, who is she going to speak Bangla to?”
“There are other Bangalis here too, you know. You moved here specifically because of them. And I’m sure there’s at least one jadukara in there.”
"Ya, they move here, with their big names and big jobs and big degrees, and what happens? They become cooks! or taxi drivers!”
"Is there something wrong with being a cook or a taxi driver?”
“NO! It’s just…they also learnt so much about their culture and what not, but look, the Bilatis, they do not care. I don’t want our Ayesha to suffer because the Bilatis don’t care.”
“Then why not just move back to Bidesh then?”
“Did you forget already? Everything is destroyed. What can we return to? We would suffer. Ayesha would suffer. You want Ayesha to suffer? I got us here for a good life, you know. Lucky for us she is born here, makes things so much easier I think.”
"So you want her to grow up like a Bilati? No concept of her culture at all, is it? Pagol na ki tui?”
"No no no! Sabila, shuno na? It’s not that I want her to not know where she comes from, at all. Na na. I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to learn Bangla right now.”
"Then how is she supposed to learn our literature, our stories, our songs? How is she supposed to be a good jadukara?”
"There are magical people here in Britain you know. With that one school…Hogwarts, I think? Some top people from there. It’s not like she will never know how to perform jadu.”
“But she won’t know how to do it like us! How is she supposed to cast a good tantramantra if she can’t even speak Bangla properly? How is she supposed to make good potions if she doesn’t even know the names of the ingredients? How, Faizal, how?”
"She will learn Bilati magic! It’s not hard, look - Lumos - see, there is light.”
"Where did you get that wand from?”
“Oh, one of my friends took me to Diagon Alley the other day. Said all the Bilati magicians have wands. We should get one for Ayesha. Oh, and you too.”
“And why should I have to learn Bilati wand magic? We didn’t need this faltu wand business back in Bidesh!”
“Things are different, Sabila. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, ha na?”
"Oh, so if the Romans all jump off a bridge I have to jump also? Chagol!”
"If I am a chagol then you are a goru - so stubborn.”
"DON’T YOU DARE FAIZAL…”
“Hey hey, I am only kidding, areh. Sabila. Look. I’m not banning Bangla from the house. You want to tell her all our stories and literature and what not, you can. What I am saying is, for her sake, I think we should talk to her in English. And teach her English. Do everything in English.”
"And what happens if I put ek Bangla khota in my sentence? What, it will be all ulta palta hai hai ki hoisei?”
"One or two things, ok. But we have to be careful not to mix up so much. One of my cousins, he is a child psychologist, he says that sometimes the children get confused when they hear more than one language, so they keep quiet. They don’t know how to say anything! But if you pick one, then they learn easier.”
"Your cousin, ah? You Shafiqs, you think you know everything.”
"You wanted to be a Shafiq. Couldn’t stop talking about it even before we got married. Thought we had the good life.”
"I didn’t think having the good life means we have to forget ourselves!”
“We don’t have to forget ANYTHING! We can teach her Bangla later, when she’s older and can master one language. Then she won’t be so confused. But Sabila, look - even if she knows Bangla now, who is she going to practice with?”
“Us…”
“Yeah, and that’s it. You think the neighbours can talk to her in Bangla? Her school teachers? Her classmates? They will only make fun of her.”
"Oh, you think Bangla is funny?”
"No, I think the Bilatis are stupid. But I don’t want their stupidity to cause my children trouble. So we have to adapt.”
“Then what about the jadu?”
"Again, where is she supposed to cast tantramantra or find ayurveda ingredients? Where is she going to find the sahitya books we loved so much? For all we know, it’s probably banned here. One strange word and whoosh - off to Azkaban. The Bilati Ministry did ban flying carpets after all.”
"Faizal, I don’t think the Bilatis will send a child to Azkaban.”
"Oh you don’t know. I’ve heard them punishing children very strictly for doing magic in front of Muggles. Just small things, but oh - Statute of Secrecy!”
“Listen to you! You sound like a Bilati already. ‘Muggle’, what a lousy word. As if they are like a pig or something.”
“That’s how the Bilatis see jadunai, really.”
"WHAT? Are the Bilatis really that backwards? Are you sure you want to raise Ayesha in this place?”
"It’s better than our other option, Sabila. At least here she still gets a chance to learn some jadu, even if it’s different than ours. Maybe she can be a magical scientist and put our jadu and their magic together. I don’t know. But back in Bidesh? She will be nothing. Worse than here.”
"I’m still not sure about this.”
“I know you’re scared, Sabila. You loved sahitya so much. I do too. That is why I loved you! Your passion for the language, so evident in your eyes! But it will have to wait, jaan…just wait a few years. Just wait till she is old enough to be able to appreciate it. You try to tell her now, she will forget.”
"And you’re sure talking to her in English only and giving her only English books is okay.”
“It will prepare her for a bright future. We don’t want her to suffer because she doesn’t know the language. People are already going to criticise her because she is not White like the Bilatis. Even though she is born and raised here. The less hurdles she has to jump through, the better.”
“So we have to hide ourselves because the Bilatis are close-minded?”
“I know, I hate it too. But that is how the world works. Not everyone can fight fight fight. That is why we did not go to the war. Sometimes we have to take care of ourselves first.”
“Spoken like a true Bilati.”
“I’m just saying the facts.”
“sigh…”
“Sabila, I promise you, if she wants to learn Bangla, once she’s ready, you can teach her. You don’t have to hide anything. You can tell her about the old days if you want. All I’m asking is, just do it in English. Until she’s old enough. OK?”
"…ok, jaan. I hope you’re right.”
[[source:Rajiv Ashrafi
OOPS WRONG BLOG LET ME TRY THIS INSTEAD
written to commemorate International Mother Language Day, which in turn commemorates the Bengali Language Movement. It’s a pretty huge deal in Bangladesh. thanks to serkestic for the reminder!
a lot of this is based on a true story: I was primarily raised in English because my family figured I would not have any avenues to practice Bangla while being raised in Malaysia. English is my first and primary language. I speak rather broken Bengali and can’t read the language. This project is as much about me trying to reclaim what I’ve lost as it is me having fun with fandom.]]
Post link
![[[a continuation - well, a prequel really - of this story]] “Trixie bè, come on, come with me.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/01060a7465e8eed273cdf0d17c2704cd/tumblr_n16ohtw3vM1tr0o6qo1_1280.png "[[a continuation - well, a prequel really - of this story]] “Trixie bè, come on, come with me.")
[[a continuation - well, a prequel really - of this story]]
“Trixie bè, come on, come with me.”
Trixie lets her sweet friend’s house rest in her mind the way she rests on her shoulder, their own little world amidst the noise ruckus of the Dixie Drug Store.
Oh don’t let the name and the plain little storefront fool you - the drugs of choice in this joint weren’t those newfangled sulfa or insulin or pepper-up or stinksap, oh no no no. Just say the magic words and the friendly nurses will dispense some fine bootleg - firewhiskey and gin and daisywood draught and absinthe, currently being poured in a glass by Fern in preparation for a slotted spoon, a cube of sugar, and Incendio.
Fern, Trixie, and a small group of other friends were at one of their regular nights at the joint, listening to good time jazz and watching shake dancers and laughing at each other’s progessively zozzled joking.
Zozzled - surely that explains Fern’s claims about this swanky party at this exotic far-off city? I mean - fountains of champagne and dragon-barrel brandy, oysters Rockerfeller and butterbeer bonbons by the plateful, the skies lit up with violet and sapphire fireworks, the best of the dirty blues singing to molls in their finely tailored suits and dolls in their ropes of pearls and diamonds - maybe just the pearls and diamonds? (That got her attention.)
“Are you sure there really was such a shindig, Fern shè, or did the Green Fairy give you a mirage?”
Fern stirred the melted sugar into her absinthe glass and took a sip. “I’m telling you, it’s real! My cousin has this canny ability to bring the right people together and create a swell time! You could say…it’s like magic.”
The rest of her friends laughed, which made Trixie roll her eyes. It’s not like the rest of them had nothing to do with magic - those limeys might have tried to put up some statute or other, but America’s ley lines were throbbing with power. Even if you weren’t especially trained, like Fern at Hogwarts or Trixie with the matriarchs in her family, you knew enough to sprinkle salt on your doorways for protection or tie a knot in your clothes to find a lost item.
Still, there were some things about magic that the other people in her table wouldn’t be able to appreciate in quite the same way: the underlying rules and logic, the effort to skillfully harness magical power without letting it overwhelm you, the sheer amount of work and study it took to really understand magic, its potential, its limitations.
Most people just assume that being magical meant you could snap your fingers and all your wishes would come true. Indeed it was Trixie’s friends, children of her parents’ friends and neighbors, a porous yet tight-knit group that lasted through the years, that named her: “Tricksy”, she of the rabbits and hats and voodoo dolls. As the gang got older their ideas of magic became a little more nuanced, but the old nickname stuck - and sometimes so did the jokes.
Then there was Fern. Fern was in most ways very different from Trixie - while Trixie was as flapper femme as they came, Fern stylised herself like one of those bull-daggers, solid and steady with a predisposition for fine suits. But Fern was similar to Trixie in one very crucial way: she, too, was a trained witch.
Fern’s training was rather distinct from Trixie’s; Fern’s English family had sent her off to Hogwarts, a fancy formal school where students took special classes in things like spell-casting and ayurveda but named them things like Charms and Herbology. The school wasn’t new to her - her father had mentioned some distant relatives that had decided to head to Bilat instead of Markina and had sent children there or that other fancy European school, Doomstrang maybe? and her mother had sometimes wished she could have sent Trixie to Beauxbatons so that she could learn to be a more refined fluently-French belle, but alas circumstances and currency were not in their favour. Bit of a blessing, really; Trixie couldn’t see how a school named after pigs or pretty sticks could teach her the depths of her family’s inheritance.
Even so, even with its cross-cultural variations, magic - like music and love - was universal. One could meet a wizard, witch, spell-caster, shaman, jadukara, sorcierè, and be able to strike a kinship on shared understanding and skill. Trixie wasn’t always fond of the way Fern and people like her tended to brand non-magical folk as Muggle, separate from them - but at the same time she was deeply appreciative to find someone that gets it.
(Doesn’t hurt that she’s a sweet sight.)
And now Fern was telling her about this fantastic shindig, supposedly run by a cousin of a cousin (I thought it was us Bengal kids that were supposed to have the convoluted family trees) who had himself gone to Hogwarts before deciding to explore the New World (nothin’ new here). Fern had been invited one time, while back up in New York visiting family, and could not stop talking about it since.
And Fern wanted her to come along.
“Sounds like a good time,” remarked Walter, one of the others at their table. His mother used to see Trixie’s mother all the time for remedies to maladies medical or otherwise, and while they had their meetings he and Trixie would have their playdates. Now he was one part wisecrack one part dreamer, his fashion sense carefully created to display effortlessness, always looking for a way up. Running the business that kept the Dixie Drug Store stocked wasn’t quite enough for him. “If you ain’t going I’ll go.”
“It’s invite-only, Waldo.”
Walter shrugged and took another sip of his whiskey. “Then I'll be Trixie. With her shapeshifting dresses and sparkle and whatnot. What are they gonna do, put me through some magic body scanner to see if I’m the right person?” He shook his head; Trixie did not seem to really appreciate the golden opportunity in front of her. He really would take it if he could.
“I wouldn’t put it past him, honestly,” replied Fern, drinking the last of her absinthe. (Maybe her last absinthe for the night. For now.) “He does like his experimenting. Every time I hear about him he’s gone and transfigured something else or made up some new charm.”
“Ooh, a scientist,” cooed Florence, another friend of Trixie’s whom she had known in school. She was fond of learning, the group’s resident bookworm with the voracious appetite, and occasionally did experimenting of her own. Trixie was sometimes glad that Florence wasn’t a witch simply because who knows what kind of chaos that girl would cook up? “God, I wonder what his library would look like. If his parties are that spectacular, imagine the books!”
“Maybe you should go, Florence - you’d probably appreciate it better,” said Trixie, sighing. “Me, I’m just ordinary.”
The fifth person at the table slammed their shot of bourbon on the table. “Child, you are not ordinary,” bellowed Ailene.
Ailene, Trixie’s oldest friend, a whirlwind of confident energy who created new bonds fast and held on to them hard. Indeed, it was so long that they’ve known each other that Trixie wasn’t quite sure when it started: all she could remember was that her mother had been unusually kind to Ailene’s mother, a single parent, and they’ve been close ever since.
Sometimes Trixie wondered if Ailene was really a witch in hiding: she did have a really peculiar ability to read people’s truest intentions, protect against harm, attract all sorts of weird and wonderful circumstances. Ailene didn’t say. Maybe she was magical the way everyone was magical, each individual carrying innate abilities to create and destroy and transform. Maybe she was magical the way only Ailene could be magical.
“If anyone’s not ordinary it's you,” said Trixie.
Her friends weren’t having any of it.
“Stop it, girl. Yes, we know Ailene’s extraordinary. What we’re saying is - so are you.” Walter took Trixie’s hands in his while Fern rested her hands on Trixie’s shoulders and Florence and Aliene watched on. “You have a gift for haute couture of the deepest kind: your work makes people not just look - but feel like one of your Sultanas.”
“That’s just because my family left me with all these fabrics from back East. Anyone could look like an exotic princess with some sparkly gold-embroidered fabric.”
“Any old fool can try - but your work? Bè, you make it real. Every last cut and stitch - smooth as silk. And I know you put in some of them magic skills to make it look like you’re wearing liquid jewels. Even an old frumpy puss like yours truly can be a superstar.”
“You’re never a frumpy puss, Walter.” Indeed, with his leather jacket (old and well-loved, charmed by Trixie to withstand any wear and tear) and a shirt that seemed to shine even in the darkest night (a gift from Trixie for his birthday many years ago, still fits beautifully), Walter had a sharp dress sense to make even a sack of flour look fabulous. But yes, Trixie’s knowledge of dressmaking went beyond the typical seamstress standbys: magical silks called for magical skills, and her father had been very particular about her mastering the family trade even across oceans.
“Oh and honey, that bottle you gave me all those years ago?” chimed in Florence. “Couldn’t ace those tests without them. I was a quakin’ mess! And whoosh – flying colours!”
Trixie remembered the little vial she had given Florence when they were at high school together and Florence was about to collapse from exam stress. A standard of her mother’s and one of the first potions Trixie learnt to brew, it was said to give the wearer luck - well, really, what it did was lift the wearer’s spirits enough so that they created their own luck. That little boost was enough for Florence to face the exams with calm confidence and get straight As. (Not too long ago Fern had told Trixie about Felix Felicis, a fairly common potion back in Limey-Land, and she wondered if the idea had jumped over with the slave boats.)
“That was mostly your smarts, Florence dear, that’s kind of the point of the potion.”
Trixie was never really very good with taking in praise. Sure, her clients loved her work - most of them had been familiar with her parents’ work and were glad that there was someone else continuing the legacy. Also there was a sudden revival of interest in the Orient, which made her work even more in demand just for the exotic factor. But being strongly skilled in dressmaking or potions-making was expected of her; it would have been unusual in her family if she wasn’t at least competent. Whenever someone asked her if she was any good, she didn’t feel like she was the best person to answer - she knew she had the technical chops, but she didn’t have Ailene’s confidence or Walter’s drive or Florence’s intelligence or Fern’s whimsy.
She was Trixie, dressmaker and potion-maker, trained in the magical arts, but not quite sure who she is outside what she can do.
Well, she had dreams. Dreams of travel, like Fern: being able to see the world and retrace the footsteps of her father’s people. Dreams of learning, like Florence: diving into subjects she’d never even thought about and soaking up everything there is to know. Dreams of ambition, like Walter: jumping on any opportunity that presented itself and really make something of herself. Dreams of poise, like Ailene: commanding a room with just her presence, no problem too big for her, self-assured and strong.
“You know, Trixie, I think you undersell yourself,” said Ailene after a while. “Yeah, maybe Walter would look great anyway and Florence would have graduated. But you’re the spark that gets things going. You have a talent for bringing out the best in people. You see what’s possible – and you make it possible.”
Trixie was somewhat taken aback by her oldest friend’s assessment. “But I thought that was your thing!”
“Where the hell do you think I learnt it from, sweetheart? Your mother befriended my mother when no one else would. You befriended me when no one else would. Your heart is in everything you do – and the purest of hearts can accomplish wonders. I tell you, Trixie, New York? New York will be a goldmine for you.”
Trixie looked at Ailene, then at Fern, then at everyone else around the table. New York could be a goldmine, yes. Maybe she can parlay some of the trendy Orient there. And she did always want to get out of Storyville for a spell.
But what would she do without all the people that made her who she is? People were leaving Storyville by droves already, including some of the gang’s old friends that would have otherwise been at this very table right now. How can she abandon her closest ones like these?
Sure, Fern would be there with her – but for how long? Fern never really stayed at one place long enough for anything; it was a wonder Fern hung about Storyville for longer than a month. And what about the rest?
“Hey, listen. You get to New York, you become a superstar, then we’ll come to visit, okay?” said Florence, noticing Trixie’s anxiety.
“Yeah babe, we’ll be fine. We still have lives here,” continued Ailene. “But you – you are destined for the stars. Or at least more of this world. I can feel it, I know.”
Walter leaned back and smiled a rare smile. “And hey, you stay there long enough, maybe you can invite me to this party. See if it’s as good as Plants here says it is. Then I won’t have to be you to get in, I’ll just be me.”
Fern would have thrown absinthe at Walter in response, but the absinthe was all gone, and she wasn’t going to waste a drop anyway. “Yeah. At least come up for the party. You can always come back. Just one weekend.”
Just one weekend. One weekend that could change everything, or one weekend that could give her a blessed break, or one weekend that could just be the same ol’ same old.
You ain’t gonna know if you don’t go.
Trixie drank some of her brandy and let the jazz roll back into her brain, sparking daydreams of golden fountains and brass horns.
“One weekend. Let’s do it.”
[[source: Andrew Ding]]
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She pulls out the last of her dresses from her closet. Every shade of the spectrum, embroidered so finely with saffron-gold and mallowsweet-ruby and dittany-pearl; you could swear the lines moved under the light. The lush fabrics were from her father, one of the early nodes of the chikondar network stitched between Hooghly and Treme, selling yards and yards of dreams of the fabled Orient. It was her father who taught her how to sew, how to bind seams with just a squeeze of the index and thumb, how to charm each dart with a fitting spell so that every body can wear your work, how to interweave strands of glamour and fortune.
She takes out a mahogany box lined with velvet, and carefully places vials of perfume within. Notes of asphodel and honeywater and jimson weed; one little whiff and your spirit apparates. The potions were from her mother, granddaughter to a granddaughter to a granddaughter of a Voodoo Queen, matriarch and crone and mediwitch to a community of vagabond peddlers and creep joint princesses. It was her mother who taught her how to brew, how to steep just enough belladonna to fly but not enough to crashland, how to portion off each tincture and oil with masterful precision, how to bottle fame and brew glory.
She picks up the tube of kajol that is older than she is and paints haunting dark rings around her bright doe eyes - a ritual since birth, when her father’s sister draws into her strength and protection.
She cradles the stole made from a wolf that died before she was born and hangs it off her limber slender shoulders - a familiar since birth, when her mother’s brother wraps around her power and sanctuary.
They are all long gone now, her elders: abbaandmomanandfupiandtonton. Claimed by tuberculosis and cyclones and Jim Crow. They left the world for her and left her the world. She’s always had a touch of the bede and the gitane in her, likely decanted from strings of long-losts dadis and grand-mères. The spirit of transience stirs in her - longing for adventure, getting away from the fading homeliness of New Orleans, mulling over her sweetheart’s invitation to New York.
Should she take up that invitation, head to unknown territory, start over? Enchant the locals with canny magical skill grounded in sincere empathy?
Isn’t that what her parents ultimately accomplished? Is that not just an approval but her birthright?
It’s time for her to follow in her family’s footsteps, and go.
Viola ‘Trixie’ Shafiq locks the door to her childhood home at the edges of Storyville and resists looking back.
[[picture source: this article about rose-based perfumes - I’ve tried looking for the original source for this specific picture but haven’t been successful. Also trying to find a 1920s vaguely South Asian looking lady is hard.
Most of this story is based on the book Bengali Harlem, which talks about the migration of Bengali people into the US, including a significant number of clothes merchants that traded and eventually settled in New Orleans. Here’s more information about this and other Bengali-US migration movements. For some reason a lot of the daughters in the Bengali/Creole of Colour families were named Viola.
There is a Part 2 (or at least a Part 1.5) of this story, which explains where she’s going and who she ends up meeting in New York (guess who!). I would have written the second part here but it’s late and I’m tired so here’s a teaser.]]
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[[of course, it’s after I make my long-delayed post about Ayesha’s Hogwarts experience that I find the perfect SouthAsian!Slytherin picture…
source:Justine Kang]]
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My family were always very adamant about getting the best education possible. It was a conviction that went for generations, not just limited to Shafiqs or even jadukara: it permeated across Bengal, crossing through the Subcontinent, spreading through most of Asia. Education was the key to everything - livelihood, freedom, power, success. And for my family, only the best would do.
They did wish they could send me to the Cadet College where they met, but after the Liberation War there were just not enough resources left to bring it back to even just pure functionality, let alone its former glory. My parents left Bidesh, left Bangladesh, to find better futures - especially for me, their only child.
So I am well aware that I sound like a petulant, ungrateful child when I say that being in Hogwarts was very rough and difficult for me.
I arrived in Hogwarts a year or two after the Second Wizarding War, where Lord Voldemort was defeated in the Great Hall, causing the school to take a short hiatus to rebuild. I was both a little too young, and a little too transient, to really know much about the Bilati war. My parents had moved to England not too long before I was born and had mostly kept to Muggle society, since you were more likely to find other Bengalis there - even a few jadukara. They left to avoid the worst of the war - trying to get involved in another one would be folly.
When I arrived at Hogwarts - via an acceptance letter that my parents were both highly surprised and very elated to receive, since they were well aware of Hogwarts’ prestige but didn’t think immigrants were eligible - a lot of students had bonded over their shared experience of the war. Many had lost family or friends to it; a few had been in the frontline. I thought I might have something to contribute too - my family just went through a war themselves, my entire culture was at risk, I too am a war survivor. (Sort of. Maybe.)
But that didn’t seem like enough. Their war was sequestered away from the Muggle world; if you weren’t a wizard, you wouldn’t understand. My war made no magical distinction, but upheld a rich cultural heritage that underpinned our magical ability - a heritage alien to their world.
I didn’t quite know what to make of the Hogwarts letter. My family had talked about it, had talked to me about jadu and some of their experiences, but they mostly wanted me to adjust to regular British life. Sometimes I heard them grumble about how they weren’t as free to practice jadu as much as they wanted to because of the Statute, how they figured that their knowledge was probably banned in Bilat anyway (they did ban flying carpets, after all), how if there was no Operation Searchlight, no war, no suppression we could have had a very luxurious bountiful life of being a jadukaranoble.
Perhaps they felt that me being at Hogwarts meant that I could get the time and space for magic that they missed. I wouldn’t be bound by statutes or restrictions. I could really dive into my birthright. I could revive the name of Shafiq, return what had been forcibly taken from us by bands of colonizers.
All that ambition and desire for greatness was likely what got me sorted in Slytherin. There were a few others in my house that had descended from families of much renown, families who also treasured prestige and power. Like me, they were sent to Hogwarts with big expectations - to rebuild names that had been torn apart by battle.
But we were only eleven, twelve, thirteen. Not even puberty yet for some people. What would we know about power and prestige? We just wanted to play.
My house seemed to have a harder time at Hogwarts than most others. People talked about unearned bad reputations, about everyone else assuming that we must have been on Voldemort’s side, about how we can’t trust the other houses just yet, just because you don’t know how they’d regard you. The only ones you could trust were your fellow Slytherins: we took care of our own.
Except I’m not sure that quite happened for me. I wasn’t ostracised or bullied, oh no. I did manage to make some friends, and a lot of the classes were…not easy necessarily, but not agonizingly hard either. (History of Magic and Muggle Studies were the main ones that gave me headaches, only because they were both so restricted in subject matter and some of their facts were dubious. Not every magical culture uses a wand, for Gods’ sake.)
But I think when you’re entering a world that is already so abstract to you in multiple ways, when you’re somehow supposed to be part of the secret In-Crowd yet you feel like you’re only qualified enough to be the Outsider, when you’re having to navigate multiple new cultures at once…that gets tiring after a while.
I couldn’t trade war stories: I wasn’t there, no one I knew was there, we were all fighting a different war. I couldn’t talk about learning magic from a kindly elder as a child: the only elders I had were my parents and the odd uncle or two, but the very limited amount of magic they exposed me to wasn’t even the same sort my classmates learnt. I couldn’t talk about what my family did over the holidays - we had a completely different set of holidays to work with, and the extent of my participation with Christmas was to visit some friends of my family’s for dinner.
I generally got along better with the Muggle-borns; they too were grappling with culture shock, not quite knowing if they’re allowed to claim themselves as witches or wizards, not when the effects of the Muggle-Born Registries were still fresh. There were a few Muggle-borns that had arrived later to Hogwarts than usual because the War-time Ministry did not allow the school owls to let them know they were eligible to study, and they had to play catch-up a lot, possibly for the entirety of their school years. Always a little bit behind, never quite getting it, objectively skilled and competent but still struggling culturally.
And even then it was a little tricky, because they were British, always had been. Technically so was I: British culture was the best culture I knew, more than Bengali culture or any other culture my parents would have known. But it’s such a different experience of Britishness when you had kids stab you with ‘paki’, when people keep asking you to repeat yourself because 'your accent got in the way’, when no one quite believes you when you say you were born at the hospital down the road and instead insist that you were born in the Ganges River.
To Hogwarts’ credit, I didn’t get as much of the racist backlash here. But I still had to deal with the clueless questions, the people thinking my last name is Patil, the attempts to fix my accent in Charms class.
Maybe I’m just oversensitive. I don’t know. The whole school was recovering from major trauma. They don’t have time to deal with one student’s identity issues - not when the school had an identity crisis of its own. Especially Slytherin House: who were they, without the blood supremacist stigma, without the easy stereotyping of alliance? How do you maintain your own core being when everyone and everything else parses you by your supposed history? Who can you trust to be just youaround?
I don’t know if I am destined for greatness, power, prestige. I’m not sure the rest of my house, or my school, quite knew that either.
[[source:kawaii palace on flickr - her friend theladyvon makes the robes in the picture for AUD$60 plus s&h.
this piece was long delayed because I could not obtain any Slytherin art with someone vaguely resembling Ayesha in it. and my comp’s too old to really do graphics editing. sorry!]]
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“Sabilabeta, please - please come to your senses!”
Mahmubah watched her daughter storm off in a huff, refusing to look back at her. Was this really her daughter? The one who thought her family was the universe, who would giggle as her mother and aunties braided her everlong hair, who would listen intently to stories of the dainee and annoyed her older cousins by being the favourite student of their jadukara elder (“she’s not even supposed to be here!”) and dreamed of mastering the difficult and arcane mysteries that were shopnojyoti?
Would her daughter really dare be so biadab to her elders, so stubborn and petulant? Well, Sabila was always stubborn, but normally she was stubborn for a good reason - like wanting to learn more and more, or wanting to help with the fishing and cooking.
But wanting to run off and marry a Shafiq?That was not a good reason.
“Maa! I have come to my senses! He is a good man, and we will have a good life. You can have a good life too, can’t you see?”
“A GOOD LIFE?! Is your life not good enough already, being with your family, living a simple village life?”
No, that goddamned Indrajala Cadet College corrupted her, taught her that her people’s ways were faltu and messy and old-fashioned, taught her that the only good way to do jadu was to be like the Bilatis: quick fixes and short sentences.
Taught her that the only good jadukara were the Shafiqs, because they owned land, and her people deserved to be ruled over because they were transient and spent more time in the rivers.
Casi, those Shafiqs called them. Peasant. Country bumpkin. Gravel and poison in their mouths.
Sabila looked back at her mother, not quite knowing which age to be: her body feeling out twenty, her mind fresh out of school and primed for a new adventure, her eyes with the same earnest twinkling from infanthood. Did her mother want her to be an independent adult or did she still see her as the child with the braids?
“Look, Maa! We live hand to mouth, hoping Allah will bless us with fish and rice, having to move around all the time because the cyclones and floods take everything away! Not even the strongest jadu of our kind can conquer Mother Nature! We are being destroyed, Maa - but this is our chance to survive.”
“IT IS THAT MAN’S FAMILY THAT IS DESTROYING US!” If Mahmubah was not too tired she would have slapped Sabila. “They pulled us from the rivers, our soul and blood, and made us come to land. They took away our connection to the water - that is why the cyclones and floods wash everything away. They have stopped paying respect to the water; instead they seek dominionandcontrol, as though they are Gods. As though they are the dainee! They and their Godforsaken school, wanting to control jadu, no respect for where it came from - the WATER!”
“You sent me to that school!” yelled Sabila. When she was not even ten, a couple of staff members from the relatively-new Begum Indrajala Jadukara Cadet College had visited their bank of the river to look for students. They were impressed enough by Sabila’s talents and sheer enthusiasm to offer her a full scholarship.
Sabila thrived in that school: her love of learning flourished as she was exposed to a wealth of subjects and skills, most of which she would never have imagined back in the river. She picked up TantramantraandAyurveda with ease, having had a lot of practice back home and relished the jadunai subjects like Mathematics and Art and English since they were so newandfresh to her.
(To her puzzlement the subject of shopnojyoti was barely mentioned anywhere in her studies - if it did it was only referenced as a lost, possibly mythical art. Sabila did spend some time trying to investigate what her teachers really knew about shopnojyoti, but after one too many deadends she dropped this line of inquiry and focused on regular schoolwork.)
Her absolute favourite school subject was Sahitya, Literature - a curious blend of jaduandjadunai. The works and writers she studied had achieved acclaim amongst the jadunai, even outside Bidesh, winning awards with strange names like No-Bell. Yet these works were so clearly written by jadukara, so infused were they with magic and power - the heart of jadu beating through the mastery of the Bengali language.
It was through Sahitya that Sabila lost her heart: to Faizal, a young man maybe a year or two older than her, as energetic and macho and boisterous as any other male his age - except he was a Shafiq. One of the Zamindars, the landowners. Probably a heir to the school. He wasn’t as passionate about learning as Sabila, indeed even with his family status he didn’t stand out much, but he was funny and had big ambitions and treated Sabila like a queen. Faizal watched Sabila recite some Chakravarti poetry at a joint recital, one of the few times the boys’ and girls’ sections came together, and fell in love with her beauty and depth of passion.
Their depth of passion sparked a love affair that had to be kept relatively secret during their school years - can’t destroy your dignityandhonour, you know - but after years of passing poetry back and forth and cheering on sports games and late-night walks with mishti and moonlight, Faizal proposed marriage.
“You are my sultana,” he said. “Let me give you the good life, be part of the Shafiqs, never a care or worry in the world. Be a real sultana.”
Sabila had been surrounded by Shafiqs - most of the school consisted of them or their peers, landowner families with privilege. There was even the odd Bilati or two, the occasional Cinadeshi and Japani, and a few who were like her - poor river people on scholarships. The Shafiq students didn’t talk to her much, but Sabila admired them all the same: their grace, dignity, ease with power. Their elegance and beauty. Their chatter about those strange exotic cities they would go to on holiday - London and New York, Alexandria and Istanbul. They had everything they ever wanted. They never needed to struggle.
Sabila remembered years of barely being able to eat when cyclones and floods would wreck their makeshift towns (a fairly common occurrence). She remembered the clothes getting threadbare, there was only so much that repair spells could do. She remembered late nights staring out onto the rivers, wondering why their boats would never travel further into the oceans, is that not what boats were for?
What was her life for, if not to explore with elegance and grow with grace? How could her mother not see how much better her life would be married to a Shafiq? Did her mother notwant her to have a good life?
“We sent you to school because we wanted you to have a chance at a good life.” Thought so! Just as Sabila was about to jump in:
“Butbeta, being a Shafiq? They are different from us. They don’t respect us. They are of the land; we are of the water. Let those of the land return to the land, and those of the water return to the water.”
“Didn’t you say all jadukara come from the water? That includes the Shafiqs. That includes Faizal.”
“THE SHAFIQS HAVE BETRAYED THE WATER! They have forgotten about the ways of the water! Did you not listen to me, baccha?! They turned their backs on the water to rule the land! They turned their backs on us, on you!”
“I AM NOT A BACCHA!”
Sabila was furious. Her mother saw her not just as a child, but a baby. Who was she to preach about respect when she wouldn’t respect her own daughter?
“Faizal did not choose to be a Shafiq,” said Sabila after a (slightly futile) attempt to calm down. “But he chose me. He could have chosen anybody, even another Shafiq or a Bilati girl, but he chose me. He wants me to be his sultana, Maa. He wants me to have the good life.”
“Does he want us to have the good life?” asked Mahmubah, losing patience with her daughter’s insolence. “You don’t just marry one person, you marry into their family, their community. Is he going to provide for us, or is he just going to rule over us and make us suffer so that we can provide for your sultanalife?”
“He will not make you suffer - I will not let him make you suffer.” Sabila was losing patience with her mother’s obstinance. “Please, Maa. Faizal is a good man. Just at least meet him. I promise, he’s not like all the other Shafiqs who don’t care. He cares. He cares about me and he will care about you.”
Sabila sat by her mother’s feet. She knew her mother had reason to doubt; she did lose her father, after all, to mysterious circumstances that left her mother barely able to take care of her even with support from extended family. But Faizal was different. She’s sure of it. If only her mother would give her a chance…
“Okay. I will meet him. But I cannot promise that I will approve. I need to make sure he is good enough for my daughter.”
Sabila kissed her mother’s feet in gratitude. Believe me, Maa - we will not let you down.
[[picture sources: articles on demotix (1,2) and sfgate about the Bede people-nomadic river-gypsies of Bangladesh that practice magic. (I’m aware that the term “gypsy” is a slur against Romani people; however, almost all my sources about the Bede people (inc from Bangladesh) use “river-gypsy” as a descriptor and I’m not sure what other terms are favoured by that community since they’re not English-speaking.
My computer can’t really deal with most graphics software and the originals of the demotic photos are about 55GBP each, so please excuse the massive watermark.
Sabila is the name of the woman whose photo I used to talk about a Bangladeshi magic wedding. Mahmubah and Faizal are named after my parents.]]
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what to wear when…a bangladeshi fairy tale (requested by notyourexrotic).
examples:দুই চোর এবং তাদের ছেলেদের মধ্যে ইভেন্ট (the adventures of two thieves and of their sons),হাড় ক্ষেত্রের (the field of bones),নীল পদ্ম এবং লাল পদ্ম (blue lotus and red lotus)
fairy tales, known as rupkatha in bangla, are imaginative stories…cultural differences affect the narrative. for instance, in many bangla tales, the wickedstepmother of european fairy tales is replaced by the jealous co-wife…unlike the western fairy tales we’ve studied, indian [and bangladeshi] tales do not usually feature redemption…if you’re bad, you’re dead. there is no theme of forgiveness…many bangla fairy tales originate in the pavchatantra or the jataka. many have also been derived from arabianandpersian tales. however, in bangla fairy tales, the fairies of middle-eastern tales are replaced by gods and goddesses. common characters of bangla fairy tales include demonsandogres,asceticsandwitches,kingsandqueens,princesandprincesses, sons of ministers and constables. miracles and magic abound: the seven childless wives of a king give birth simultaneously after eating a magicrootgiven by an ascetic, animals foretell the future or produce goldcoins, princes disguise themselves as birdsoranimals to perform heroic deeds, etc. in kajal rekha, the closed door of a temple opens at the touch of kajal rekha’s hand; in buddhu bhutum, queens give birth to an owl and a monkey. despite the unbelievable and impossible events that take place in fairy tales, their underlying theme of virtue rewarded and evil punished gives them a universal appeal.
post 791 of an infinity-part series
#”bangladesh is a small country surrounded by india and the bay of bengal with lots of rivers and other bodies of water. because water is#such a prominent feature it tends to be incorporated into fairy tales there… one thing that comes up in this fairy tale [blue lotus and red lotus] that might not in a western tale is having a half-sibling. in the story lalkamal and neelkamal are half-brothers yet [they] are still very close and love each other. the story also directly states that one of the king’s wives is a demon; in western fairy tales the characterization of a mother as evil is never this strong or direct. the two birds that help lalkamal and neelkamal however are similar to the magical animals we’ve seen helping other protagonists such as the birds in cinderella and hansel and gretel.”#”there is magic in the tales but there are no magical helpers such as fairy godmothers. the magic simply happens because of some prior cause. for example in the tale blue lotus and red lotus the two stepbrothers are eaten by the evil queen and are transformed into a#golden and an iron egg. even though no fairy intervened the magical even still occurred. rupkothas also contain some different dramatic personae than western tales. a few examples of characters that rupkothas have are demons ghosts and sons of ministers.#another characteristic that separates bangladesh tradition from western tradition is how far back the literary form of the tales go.#the panchatantra (the five books) was written circa 550 a.d… the jataka was written in the 5th century b.c.#this is remarkable when one considers that most of the popular western tales took literary form in the 17th and 18th centuries a.d.”
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I…I don’t know what came over me with that last outburst.
Flying carpets, really? I’m getting all passionate and heated up over carpets?
I don’t even ride freakin’ carpets! Or brooms, or lidi brooms, or Portkeys, or Floo (because of course fireplaces are universal) or whatever else.
Just give me a car. Or a normal train. Or whatever. Really.
I think my dad’s rubbing off on me. He’s the one always ranting about the British Ministry of Magic and how their regulations don’t make sense. I’m not in that world anymore. It doesn’t matter to me. None of it matters to me.
I don’t matter to them anyway.
See, I don’t understand what the British wizarding world’s problem is with flying carpets. The Ministry of Magic over there banned them because they were a ‘Muggle object’ - because brooms don’t exist in the Muggle world at all, nooooooo. And they’re expecting the rest of the world to follow suit because they’re Brits and therefore know better?
Hell the sort of brooms you see in England - whether as transport or as cleaning tool - aren’t even that common elsewhere. This, for example, is a more common type of 'broom’ in Asia, particularly where my parents are from:
Yes, a bundle of sticks. Sure, you could magically reinforce them so that they don’t break, but the idea of sitting on a bunch of splinters doesn’t appeal to me.
I did try out flying during my brief time at Hogwarts. It’s…okay, but probably overrated. The broomsticks aren’t particularly comfortable, it takes an incredible amount of balance, and you’re basically trying to keep yourself stable on a tiny tiny amount of space. And you can’t really carry anything that you’re not wearing (though I have been told of broomsticks that come with luggage baskets charmed to carry any amount of items).
Flying carpets though? They’re wide, they’re soft, they’re gentle. You can bring multiple people and a whole host of objects. Many of them do double duty too - that one in the picture? You put it over any surface and it gives you instant access to hidden levels and rooms - if there’s nothing there, or if you’re a Muggle or jadunai, all you see is a pretty design. Sometimes you just don’t have time to hunt for trapdoors.
One of my uncles designs flying carpets. A lot of the ones his company makes are pretty standard, like how there are regular family cars. But they’re also doing a lot of groundbreaking work with carpets, openly borrowing from the jadunai, knowing that a lot of technological innovation on the jadunai side was inspired by us anyway so why restrict ourselves? It’s just symbiosis, says he. I was kind of young when I met him and his carpet company for the first time, visiting family back in Bidesh, and the carpets were the main thing I remember about that entire trip.
He had all sorts of fun stuff: carpets with built-in compasses (some of those have compasses that point to the Kaabah so they can double as Muslim prayer mats), this prototype where the carpet itself was a GPS system, ones with voice command, I think they were working on one that purifies the air or does something to reduce carbon footprints. All very imaginative innovative stuff.
And what do the Brits, the Bilatis do? BAN THEM. Probably because they feel threatened that some backwards region of the world can be more magically advanced than they are. 'Muggle objects’, pah.
There’s a lot about Bideshi magic that I’m still struggling to wrap my head around, so much that I don’t even know. But flying carpets? Here is where we win.
[[not sure where the original carpet picture is from. picture source for the lidi broom.]]
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