Al-Muharrir: The Sheer Madness and Method of Writing an Epic

In this 44th year to mark my birth, I have decided to embark on a soul-defining journey of knowledge-seeking, skills-crafting, and spirit-nurturing by fashioning an adventurous epic tale written all in English verse about a mighty little girl named Al-Muharrir who single-handedly instigates the resurrection of an Iraq decimated by military invasion and occupation.

She is a Prophet and a Warrior, a new Messenger of God, who rises from the dead from her own vicious tragedy to avenge and vanquish those who have dared to erase the noble vestiges of her land, her language, her herstories and theirstories, her country's gifts to humankind and humanity, her people, and the world. How she seeks justice will surprise the reader, for her story is not the age-old story of past kings and rulers who created all manner of tortures for their fellow humans and other species while at the same time being blindly praised for their virtues.

Here are the series of modules, each of which I must complete and/or master before moving onto the next course. It's a lifelong journey!

The end result should be The BOOK and a collection of instrumental tunes that reflect the epic. 

*MODULE A: Selected Readings

I: Reading: The Shahnameh
II: Reading: The Divine Comedy 
III: Reading: The Lord of the Rings
IV: Reading: Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello
VI: Reading: The Illiad and The Odyssey
VII: Reading: Moby Dick
VII: Reading: The Epic of Gilgamesh 
VIII: Reading: The Poetics of the Obscene: Ibn Hajjaj and Sukhf
IX: Reading: Black Hearts 
X: Reading: The Corpse Washer
XI: Reading: The Quran
XII: Reading: The Forgotten Queens of Islam
XIII: Reading: The Ramayana and Mahabharata
XIV: Reading: Indigenous Literature and Storytelling from Around the World
XV: Reading: Rituals of War: The Body and Violence in Mesopotamia
XVI: Reading: Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia
XVII: Reading: The Occult, Witchcraft, Sorcery in Indigenous, African, Eastern and Western Habitats
XVIII: Studies: Arabic Poetry
XIX: Reading: Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in War Veterans
XX: Reading: Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays
XXI: Reading: Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Muslims
XXII: Reading: The Self, Spirituality, God, and the Cosmos
XXIII: Reading: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirits
XXIV: Reading: Black Sumer: The African Origins of Civilization
XXV: Reading: Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society
XXVI: Reading: The Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature

*This list will continue to grow and represent a more diverse selection of books from all regions of the world as I progress with the imagining of the story. There will also be a separate module to understand poetry and how it's constructed, used, and presented in different historical and cultural contexts. 

Al-Muharrir

Digital Art by Neon

CONCURRENT MODULES B: Languages, Music, & Illustration

I: Iraqi Arabic, Classical Arabic
II. Art: Digital epics

III. Music: Learn how to compose & produce electronica, synthwave

MODULE C: Philosophy

Mostly readings that will include learning from both Eastern and Western philosophers - ancient and contemporary. Will develop list of readings shortly.

MODULE D: Virtual Travel

Certain embattled and/or ancient regions in our world granted I have access. Maybe not actual travel, but virtual seems like a good alternative. 

MODULE E: Esoteric Literature & Practices 

Tons of books to read. I will put them up here shortly. 

Selection of Oracle and Tarot Decks

MODULE F: The Writing Begins - concurrent with Modules D & F

Al-Muharrir starts to take shape in verse drawing from the vast literary, historical, spiritual/religious, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technological, modern, and social inventions and institutions that inform and impact human behaviour.

MODULE G: Intellectual Property Rights

Designate someone or a group of people who will inherit the rights of Al-Muharrir and who will present the contents of the Epic to the public in a manner consistent with the overall themes of this devotion to the Divine, to the Arts, and to the Angels, SDG and AJ, whose spirits will continue to guide the completion of this sheroic legend. They will be in my thoughts, my practice and my performance till the day I expire. This much, I promise them, for they will forever be uniquely just themselves; yet, through their narratives, they will intuitively encompass the spirits and passions of everyone else too, particularly the disappeared, the forgotten, and the wretched of our Earth.

Themes: Justice - Virtue - Mercy. 

And so, Al-Muharrir must surely begin...Oh...if you decide to embark on a similar journey and create your own rendition of Al-Muharrir and finish it before I do, then I will kiss the ground you walk on because through you, my vision became a reality regardless of the recipient of such glory. 

Al-Muharrir, in her essential wholeness, is already everywhere and her power belongs to everyone. 

Thank the Divine. 

...

Myriad Ilk

PHOTO BY SI

This one was no pretty boy.
An angry boy, he was.

His fists were always ready for the thrill of a fight,
Kicking, punching, pulling, wrestling,
knocking the senses out of the ones who dared to enter the bogeyman's ring.

From whence he retrieved this bullish power, nobody thought to guess.

To them, he was a girrrrrrrl gone wild,
made wilder by the abominable protrusions that forced his invalidation.

So, for a time, he retreated into a festering muteness
so the child might avoid the turbulence of incongruity.

But now, alas, now, his blood boils again,
and thus begins the modifications that necessitate the giving back of a life.

Such revisions in form and function are entirely imperceptible to the naked eye of public scrutiny, for civilization's exclusive categorizations of birds and breeds
expose the asininity of its sacrilege against our extraordinary human natures.

We are, in fact, swarming multitudes of particularities,
some in perpetual motion as they meander through permeable surfaces,
breaking normative barriers, and generally stirring the shit out of
murderously enforced "respectable" socieities.

This boy is not a crime.

But the ones incarcerated in minds grossly puny and pernicious
blindly and ruthlessly seek the boy's deletion.

The boy perseveres, and seeks recovery, exploring the myriad ilk of tempestuous masculinities,

no longer slack in this discordant shell.

Consequence

PHOTO BY SI

Stelliferous illuminations allow gratitude to advance in tortoise-like pace 

along channels oneiric in such moments, 

tragically transforming back to an astrophobic disposition 

when the Heavens' guiding celestial spirit is enisled 'neath traitorous brows.

Such moments. Acquiescent to what can only be termed Life.

Such moments. Revive an afflictive certainty of the world's virtue.

But when the morrow ascends as an agile pilferer

It ferociously extirpates glee with blood-thirsty artillery

So our souls remain forever perturbed, 

perplexed by habitual newsprint tales, x-rays of infamy and iniquity.

O Divine one, absolve us all from the innate infernos we have fashioned into Hell,

So that we may strive in earnest for a most potent pedigree of conscience 

that effortlessly emerges within those few fateful seconds before we make that...

one irreparable, inexpiable...

...plunge. 

And Then the Heavens Painted in Green

PHOTO BY SI

It was our epic drive across these divergent landscapes.

In a country we called Home.

Picturesque is Nature’s splendour, with exquisite attention to detail.

But historic.

In the many calamitous paths the country trampled through

to create this current civilization of systems that…

…robbed Indigeneity,

…silenced the whizzing of struggling arrows,

…roared the boom, boom of guns and royal proclamations,

…sanctioned the abduction of brown-skinned children from all they knew,

…forced them into dark, shadowy corridors that echoed the filthy thoughts of desperate men and women, of faith.

And so infrastructures were built on an annihilation.

My baby and I heard the longing whispers of the lost children,

who were now mere spectres of their former glorious selves,

wandering heaving forests and searching hungry ravines,

pouring forth their drink and distress, into wells,

that swallowed up the harm done with a shushhhhhhhh

lasting for generations, shameful secrets of a budding nation.

From the Westcoast to the Eastcoast, we whizzed by multiple unmarked graves,

Of the missing and murdered,

At that time, hashtags did not exist, so the world remained in utter ignorance of #MMIW.

Our country protected for the while from the inevitable disgrace that came too late.

Over the sound of an exhausted, gurgling minivan,

filled to the top of clutter and wares from lives we left behind,

my baby and I steered with cautious speed as we caught the devious glints of disappearing sunlight.

We drove some nights under sky so mystically obscure,

we feared we too would become insignificant stats,

but we were privileged to have the gods on our side.

Upon crossing the defining lines between fascination and monotony,

We headed northward to spend a few lazy days in good company.

No moonlight to offer a safe way to our destination, only the infrequent glare of oncoming traffic.

But as we edged closer to a lonesome stretch, driving up, up into hills unknown,

we looked through the windshield to observe a curiosity hovering above,

We slowed, my foot on the brakes, in awe.

It was as if an invisible hand were painting the atmosphere.

Thick brush strokes of incandescent green hues.

This lustrous phenomenon of jade and emerald tapered off,

floating down, vanishing into the artificial lights of the highway

We marveled at the flight of time through this hypnotic haze,

beckoning us to greater heights,

to a greater recognition of our frailties,

a knowing that we shall reap what we sow,

For then the Heavens painted in green.

In that moment, my baby and I witnessed a transcendence of millions,

from the atrocities of a wounded past,

they moved back to that familiar home of grace and abundance,

where they once spoke the tongues of animals and insects, of trees and grass, of rivers and streams, of hills and earth.

And then the Heavens painted in green,

And then the Heavens painted in green,

Lighting up the starkness of a brutal truth,

And glowing with the promise of a triumphant resurrection.