Latest Posts by sock-mace - Page 3
“i. “Your name is Tasbeeh. Don’t let them call you by anything else.” My mother speaks to me in Arabic; the command sounds more forceful in her mother tongue, a Libyan dialect that is all sharp edges and hard, guttural sounds. I am seven years old and it has never occurred to me to disobey my mother. Until twelve years old, I would believe God gave her the supernatural ability to tell when I’m lying. “Don’t let them give you an English nickname,” my mother insists once again, “I didn’t raise amreekan.” My mother spits out this last word with venom. Amreekan. Americans. It sounds like a curse coming out of her mouth. Eight years in this country and she’s still not convinced she lives here. She wears her headscarf tightly around her neck, wades across the school lawn in long, floor-skimming skirts. Eight years in this country and her tongue refuses to bend and soften for the English language. It embarrasses me, her heavy Arab tongue, wrapping itself so forcefully around the clumsy syllables of English, strangling them out of their meaning. But she is fierce and fearless. I have never heard her apologize to anyone. She will hold up long grocery lines checking and double-checking the receipt in case they’re trying to cheat us. My humiliation is heavy enough for the both of us. My English is not. Sometimes I step away, so people don’t know we’re together but my dark hair and skin betray me as a member of her tribe. On my first day of school, my mother presses a kiss to my cheek. “Your name is Tasbeeh,” she says again, like I’ve forgotten. “Tasbeeh.” ii. Roll call is the worst part of my day. After a long list of Brittanys, Jonathans, Ashleys, and Yen-but-call-me-Jens, the teacher rests on my name in silence. She squints. She has never seen this combination of letters strung together in this order before. They are incomprehensible. What is this h doing at the end? Maybe it is a typo. “Tas…?” “Tasbeeh,” I mutter, with my hand half up in the air. “Tasbeeh.” A pause. “Do you go by anything else?” “No,” I say. “Just Tasbeeh. Tas-beeh.” “Tazbee. All right. Alex?” She moves on before I can correct her. She said it wrong. She said it so wrong. I have never heard my name said so ugly before, like it’s a burden. Her entire face contorts as she says it, like she is expelling a distasteful thing from her mouth. She avoids saying it for the rest of the day, but she has already baptized me with this new name. It is the name everyone knows me by, now, for the next six years I am in elementary school. “Tazbee,” a name with no grace, no meaning, no history; it belongs in no language. “Tazbee,” says one of the students on the playground, later. “Like Tazmanian Devil?” Everyone laughs. I laugh too. It is funny, if you think about it. iii. I do not correct anyone for years. One day, in third grade, a plane flies above our school. “Your dad up there, Bin Laden?” The voice comes from behind. It is dripping in derision. “My name is Tazbee,” I say. I said it in this heavy English accent, so he may know who I am. I am American. But when I turn around they are gone. iv. I go to middle school far, far away. It is a 30-minute drive from our house. It’s a beautiful set of buildings located a few blocks off the beach. I have never in my life seen so many blond people, so many colored irises. This is a school full of Ashtons and Penelopes, Patricks and Sophias. Beautiful names that belong to beautiful faces. The kind of names that promise a lifetime of social triumph. I am one of two headscarved girls at this new school. We are assigned the same gym class. We are the only ones in sweatpants and long-sleeved undershirts. We are both dreading roll call. When the gym teacher pauses at my name, I am already red with humiliation. “How do I say your name?” she asks. “Tazbee,” I say. “Can I just call you Tess?” I want to say yes. Call me Tess. But my mother will know, somehow. She will see it written in my eyes. God will whisper it in her ear. Her disappointment will overwhelm me. “No,” I say, “Please call me Tazbee.” I don’t hear her say it for the rest of the year. v. My history teacher calls me Tashbah for the entire year. It does not matter how often I correct her, she reverts to that misshapen sneeze of a word. It is the ugliest conglomeration of sounds I have ever heard. When my mother comes to parents’ night, she corrects her angrily, “Tasbeeh. Her name is Tasbeeh.” My history teacher grimaces. I want the world to swallow me up. vi. My college professors don’t even bother. I will only know them for a few months of the year. They smother my name in their mouths. It is a hindrance for their tongues. They hand me papers silently. One of them mumbles it unintelligibly whenever he calls on my hand. Another just calls me “T.” My name is a burden. My name is a burden. My name is a burden. I am a burden. vii. On the radio I hear a story about a tribe in some remote, rural place that has no name for the color blue. They do not know what the color blue is. It has no name so it does not exist. It does not exist because it has no name. viii. At the start of a new semester, I walk into a math class. My teacher is blond and blue-eyed. I don’t remember his name. When he comes to mine on the roll call, he takes the requisite pause. I hold my breath. “How do I pronounce your name?” he asks. I say, “Just call me Tess.” “Is that how it’s pronounced?” I say, “No one’s ever been able to pronounce it.” “That’s probably because they didn’t want to try,” he said. “What is your name?” When I say my name, it feels like redemption. I have never said it this way before. Tasbeeh. He repeats it back to me several times until he’s got it. It is difficult for his American tongue. His has none of the strength, none of the force of my mother’s. But he gets it, eventually, and it sounds beautiful. I have never heard it sound so beautiful. I have never felt so deserving of a name. My name feels like a crown. ix. “Thank you for my name, mama.” x. When the barista asks me my name, sharpie poised above the coffee cup, I tell him: “My name is Tasbeeh. It’s a tough t clinging to a soft a, which melts into a silky ssss, which loosely hugs the b, and the rest of my name is a hard whisper — eeh. Tasbeeh. My name is Tasbeeh. Hold it in your mouth until it becomes a prayer. My name is a valuable undertaking. My name requires your rapt attention. Say my name in one swift note – Tasbeeeeeeeh – sand let the h heat your throat like cinnamon. Tasbeeh. My name is an endeavor. My name is a song. Tasbeeh. It means giving glory to God. Tasbeeh. Wrap your tongue around my name, unravel it with the music of your voice, and give God what he is due”
—
Tasbeeh Herwees, "The Names They Gave Me“ (via cat-phuong)
I am weeping.
(via strangeasanjles)
im not saying you should follow my spotify/check out my playlist but you should follow my spotify and check out my playlists :)
ICE made a decision to order all international students whose universities are online to leave the country or risk facing immigration consequences and getting deported which essentially means that students will have to decide between leaving the US or risk their health. many countries don’t even have their borders open and some people may not even have places to go so please sign this petition which requests that international students get the option to finish their degrees and remain in the USA
davekat bogan wedding! featuring the dulcet tones of @v-sharp
i'm literally begging you to help us defend our freedom of speech. we have six days.
please reblog this post, especially if you live outside of the philippines. please help us.
i didn't make the carrd, but it's one of the most useful links right now. #JunkTerrorBillNow needs the most urgency, but there are other issues present too.
i'm begging you all to reblog.
You know what bugs me about soulmate aus? So, I’m assuming that this whole “the first thing your soulmate says to you blahblahblah” is a worldwide thing. So many of the aus I’ve read have a quote at some point that addresses how tragic it is when people have soul words that say something like “hi” or “‘sup” which makes NO SENSE! In a world where the first thing you say to people is THAT important, WHY GOD WHY would the culture still use standard greetings? Who the fuck is still saying hello at this point? Everyone in these worlds would surely develop a personalized greeting different from everybody else’s to prevent confusion. Like how no 2 racehorses can have the same racing name? The best part is that every time people met someone new for the first time, they would try to say something that no one else had said. You’d have people meeting eachother at a job intetview, they’d shake hands, smile politely, then one of them would be like “Every Tuesday, I hard even grape purple farm house sunsets too” and this would be perfectly normal. Or you’d go up to the cash register at Starbucks and instead of saying “Hello, what can i get for you today?” She’d look you right in the eye and say “I don’t know what Space Jam is” THEN ask you what you want and she’d repeat that to every customer in the line for the rest of her career. And because they live in the AU, nobody would think it was weird.
Any tips for panel layout for pacing? I feel like yours really lends itself to the stories u tell.
thank u. its random comic tips which may or may not answer your question time, cookie edition
did that help
is there a bnha x reader social media AU but with villains??? I would prefer Dabi but hm I would take whatever you guys have sksl
REBLOG IF HOL HORSE IS GAY
IM TRYING TO PROVE A POINT
Please reblog this.
For anyone who doesn't live with children or watch cartoons on a regular basis, Nickelodeon went off the air for 8 minutes and 46 seconds today. During that time, instead of playing shows or commercials, there was a Nickelodeon orange background with scrolling and repeating messages about racial equality, the right to education, and the right to be safe from harm and hatred.
For those who aren't aware, as I wasn't until I googled it, 8 minutes and 46 seconds was the exact amount of time that George Floyd was pinned on the ground.
There's nothing subtle about this and I'm just. Shocked. In a good way of course, I've just never seen this sort of rallying behind a race-based social movement.
HOW TO DONATE TO BLM WHEN YOU HAVE NO MONEY
a black woman named zoe amira posted a video on youtube. this video is an hour long and filled with art and music from black creators. it has a ton of ads, and in result will rack up a ton of revenue. 100% of the ad revenue from the video will be dispersed between various blm organizations, including bail-out funds for protesters. it will be split between the following, dependent on necessity
brooklyn bail fund
minnesota freedom fund
atlanta action network
columbus freedom fund
louisville community bail fund
chicago bond
black visions collective
richmond community bail fund
the bail project inc
nw com bail fund
philadelphia bail fund
the korchhinski-parquet family gofundme
george floyd’s family gofundme
blacklivesmatter.com
reclaim the block
aclu
turn off your adblocker and put the video on repeat. do not skip ads. let it play on loop whether you’re listening or not. mute the tab if you need to focus elsewhere. but let. it. play.
youtube will donate to blm for you.
please, please reblog. for people who don’t have money to spare, this is incredibly important information to have.
comprehensive thread of petitions + donation links in the replies + gofundme directly from george floyd’s family
my favorite villagers 😌💅🏻✨