Weeks into the Burnham premiership, Arzu asks the PM why he still hasn’t tried to change the racist narratives that have not only divided and decimated British society, they have propelled war and quite possibly huge military escalation. Nobody believes you and your government, your police service or compliant media,
Some thoughts from Arzu in memory of the late Maz (Masarrat) Saleem. It’s just gone 40 days since the news that Maz Saleem passed away. If you don’t know who she was, you can read an obituary here, and listen to her in her own words here. I had met Maz many
One of Arzu’s earlier published creative pieces, published for the Other Asias project, in Redo Pakistan 2010. The piece dates from 2010. Read the full issue here. ***** every time is now. And so it came to pass that every time is now, and now is every time,
In her second piece addressing the new British PM, Arzu asks whether Andy Burnham, is as he claims, really able and willing to change the script, and tell a new story of ‘nation’. As a US ground invasion of Iran looms , the new PM must choose a vision of ‘us’ that
Arzu addresses Andy Burnham about the poem V, which he claims has affected him deeply, and asks why then he has failed to discuss the disunited state of the nation, or call out the epidemic of racism. Listen here or read below Apparently V by Tony Harrison (1985) had a profound
Scheduled for Ashura 2026. Written Muharram 2009. Read below the video. The Rising I am Hussain and I have risen so too Qasim, Abbas and Hur and Zainab, dear Zainab bears witness to our deaths again in preference to life with humiliation. And amongst her tears and those
Arzu recalls the response of friends and people she met in Bosnia the day after the UK’s Brexit Referendum. In the result to leave the European Union, and the campaign that led up to they saw their own experiences before the Bosnian war unleashed in the British public space. Ten years on,
This blog is a big thank you to all of the overwhelming support for the poetry volume, Every Day and Every Land: Poems on the Tragedy of Karbala. Find more details on where to find it and where profits go to below. I wanted to share one of the poems that I contributed
Arzu argues that we need to join the dots and realise that the narratives of the UK and the west more broadly as ‘liberal’ ‘tolerant’ and ‘just’ are fictions that we have internalised. This week’s sentencing of the Filton Four, and the decision by the Court of Appeal to uphold the proscription
