by Hajra Waheed

The Kamal

What happens when sky and earth collapse?
When maps disappear altogether?
What do we draw towards then?
What lines do we draw first?

There once was an instrument known as the kamal.
It was simple.
It measured you and I, in relation to the stars.
Consisted of a number of oblong pieces of wood, different sizes, with a string.
To measure the height of the north star – the string was held between the teeth,
with the wood at such distance from the eye that while the lower edge was in line with the horizon,
the upper edge just touched the star.

Horizon lines never lie.
It was remarkably accurate.

Home.
Where a horizontal line crosses a vertical one.
Two lines that intersect into infinite combinations.

The Spiral

The spiral
is much more than just a form.

Its motion can be centrifugal and centripetal
it can denote both growth and decay
ascent and descent
evolution and involution
accumulation and dissolution.
It expands and contracts,
increases and decreases
reveals even as it hides
all the while offering back anew whatever it receives.

It is not amnesia nor the status quo.
It is not sapless nor atrophied.
It does not settle nor occupy.
It does not want you to believe it is immutable, inevitable, invulnerable, unchangeable.
It is not naïvely cynical where perfection is a measure by which all else falls short.
It is a study and not an art. Indeed it is not perfect.
It is a dance – of moving closer to the beloved
the possibility of approaching the essence
a way to understand and process time and space.

A rooted blade of grass circling around itself
it is the form of smoke entering the air
the reverberations of a drop of rain on another body of water.
The form of embryos and the cylindrical helices of our umbilical cords that tether mother to child
of blooming date palms and the curvature of seashells.
It’s the wave forms found in heart cells
rhythmically contracting to produce each beat
and the shape that nerve cells take before firing into the brain at the slightest onset of fear.
The form DNA strands resume
that whirlpools inhabit
that fingerprints fortify.
The elliptical discs of spiral galaxies
the approach of a hawk to its prey
the approach of an insect to a source of light.
By maintaining the same shape through each successive turn
the least amount of energy is used.

It reverberates ad infinitum.

Informs our perspectives and grants us insight into what is visible and invisible.
It is the practice of return.
It is never redundant.
It is the act of remembering,
the act of making oneself whole again.
At its eye, it is a compass that allows us to stand center in the middle of a storm.
It reminds us that just as everything comes together
everything falls apart again.

It is standing in full knowledge of this and remaining undefeated against despair.

It is a way of seeing.
The gift of wild possibilities and untold stories.
It is the belief that what we do matters.

It is made from the power and will of individuals and unarmed people,
From the extraordinary achievement of ordinary people and ordinary daily actions
of tending to, listening to, watching over and protecting.
It is survival as revival,
resistance as reclamation,
resilience as transformation.

It represents the awareness of the self
and the expansion of this awareness outwards.
It is about community
collaboration
attaching and being attached
about keeping an open heart
in the face of a broken one.

Change,
is rarely a straightforward line.