My dearest Māori family

Elke vrijdag schrijft een van onze vijf vaste online correspondenten een brief aan iemand. Deze week richt Anissa Boujdaini haar brief aan de Maori’s, die na de aanslag in Nieuw-Zeeland rouwden met ceremoniële dansen. ‘Your haka is the only act that has been able to ease my mind and heart.’

I started writing this letter two days after the terrorist attack in your country Aotearoa where a white supremacist took the lives of 50 Muslims, mostly of colour. As I am writing this, I am feeling… nothing. I am not that sad. I am not that disappointed. I am not that heartbroken. I was prepared. They prepared me.

‘My heart is crying.’ I read it several times from people expressing their grievance. It made me shrug. At best I’d find it cute, at worst corny. I envy those whose hearts are still crying, whose hearts were still surprised when the news first got to them. Without diminishing the importance and value of every single life taken, the reporting on the terrorist attack itself felt like nothing more than a white supremacist Schweppes-commercial. Uma Thurman whispering: ‘What did you expect?’.

I am reading messages of white non-Muslims who consider themselves allies. Their words of solidarity don’t comfort me. If anything, their words anger me because after all the lingering hateful speech against Black and Brown Muslims on (social) media, from their friends and family members, from their teachers, from their politicians… they only chose to speak now.

There is something undeserving about grieving the guilt away on the graves of the people they consciously chose not to protect

There is something undeserving about grieving the guilt away on the graves of the people they consciously chose not to protect when they had the power to do so, preferring to entertain endless discussions and to philosophize on whether or not something is racist and hateful rhetoric directed to singled-out, vulnerable groups.

Dearest Māori, even most of my fellow Muslims can’t comfort me. Too many of them quickly chose to emphasize their oh so peaceful religion, as if that is what is being questioned here. They share the story of the man at the door greeting the killer with ‘salaam aleikoum, brother’, so as to show how beautiful of a person he was… as a Muslim. So as to show that he was indeed a person, human.

Dearest Māori, even most of my fellow Muslims can’t comfort me. Too many of them quickly chose to emphasize their oh so peaceful religion.

It is a story told to let the white world know how peaceful Muslims are, as if we are violent by nature, only adding to the already existing anti-Muslim narratives. Can you imagine, our community itself being so infected by outside hate and fear that we move through this world according to their Islam-hating ideas? Afraid to step toes, afraid to come across as too strong and too powerful, making ourselves smaller than we truly are because our Being might come across as offensive. Bending over backwards to show how docile we are.

I wish the man at the door greeted him with my understanding of ‘salaam aleikoum’. A salaam that is partly welcoming, partly ready to grab you by the throat and pinch you against the wall if need be, aware of the violence that reaches us on a daily basis, not just when our blood literally floods the streets. I don’t know if it would have made any difference.

The need for acceptance from a big part of the Muslim community is nothing new. It doesn’t anger or annoy me anymore, I just don’t find a place to grieve there either. So I don’t. How painfully ironic that we try to show a world that doesn’t want us how ‘peaceful’ we are and by doing so, making ourselves and our spaces less peaceful to our fellow Muslims.

Dearest Māori, my brothers and sisters. You were the only ones who gave me the room to feel protected enough to tap into the pain of the last couple of days and weeks, while simultaneously comforting me.

I saw several haka being performed as a tribute to the Christchurch martyrs. It was a beautiful and powerful reminder of how we are connected as different people of colour

I saw several haka being performed as a tribute to the Christchurch martyrs. It was a beautiful and powerful reminder of how we are connected as different people of colour, as indigenous people, as Black and Brown people. It was a reminder of how strong our traditions, our histories, our divine acts are. How they are alike in many ways.

It was a reminder of how borders are insignificant to us because with only one ritual done with so much power, love and respect, you came closer to me than those who are in my immediate presence. Through your bodies, I was given the needed support to survive the next couple of hypocritical hours and days in a western world that despises and attacks our heritage, our existence and our bodies.

A war ceremony done in love, support and grievance. Honouring both the deaths of white supremacist today, as those of centuries ago by the invaders of your country. A ceremony that doesn’t leave us numb, but prepares us, comforts us, heals us and gives us power. I feel more connected to your haka than any other performances of grievance I saw, usually aimed to reassure a white majority that ‘we are one and united in pain’ (while we are not) rather than focussing on the survival and well-being of community members.

In many ways, haka reminds me of salah as – what I consider to be – a revolutionary act. Getting in line, one person next to another, disciplined and focussed on something much more valuable than what this world can offer us. Our breathing, our words, the whispering of our verses, moving in sync like one body. Performing an act that a dominant group ridicules or doesn’t understand, but being perfectly fine with that and holding strong unto it. Just like those killed in Aotearoa did. A dance with the Divine that would turn world’s best choreographers envious.

I am respectfully learning about your traditions. I’m learning about Ka Mate, the haka celebrating life over death. I am learning about the significance of your movements during the haka. About pukana and whetero as acts of defiance. That is what our movements and our politicized bodies are, by mere existing, they are acts of defiance.

Your haka is the only act that has been able to ease my mind and heart.

The hitting of your hands against your chests, against your upper legs, the stomping of your feet on the earth, preparing the soil for our people to rest in, the drum sound you create with it… Your haka is the only act that has been able to ease my mind and heart. Deeply touched and in awe, I’m seeing the pain going through your bodies and leaving your mouths through your shouts, your poems, your chants, your songs, your divine words. I feel your hands reaching into my chest, grabbing whatever hurt there is inside, and then hitting the pain with your hands to yours.

Helping me carry the grieve, unselfishly. I feel your presence here with me, though miles away, in your gestures.

And I take it all in like medicine.

My salutations to you, my people.

With an immense appreciation and love for the affectionate acts you have shown us,
ⴰⵏⵉⵙⴰ

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Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!
Ka mate! ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!
Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru
Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā
Ā, upane! ka upane!
Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra!

(I die! I die! I live! I live!
I die! I die! I live! I live!
This is the hairy man
who fetched the Sun and made it shine again.
A step upward, another step upward!
A step upward, another... the Sun shines!)