TAQWACORE WEBZINE

written by Tanzila Ahmed

I pulled the car over and cried. I cried and cried and cried. Tears streamed down my face behind my big sunglasses as I sat in my car in the striking heat of summer. I was somewhere in the middle of Texas, completely all alone. I looked out my windshield at the Texan scenery wondering how I had ended up there 1,500 miles away from my home in Southern California. Somewhere along the way the lines had become blurred. Somewhere over the course of the past few months who I was in this Taqwacore space had blurred. I was no longer a blogger from the outside looking in. I felt like I was that kid in Almost Famous, the one that was a writer and got totally absorbed into the band subculture. I was in it, as in it as one could possibly get. I was Taqwacore, whether I liked it or not.

The Kominas had left me to finish the national Taqwatour without me. I was all alone somewhere outside of Austin, Texas. I wiped my tears and walked into the Walgreens I was parked in front of. Inside, I bought a map of the nation. I didn’t own a map. First step first – I needed a map. I had just gone on a spiritual pilgrimage of the Taqwacore kind. With love, and punk and punk drunk love. With two weeks till the start of Ramadan, it seemed symbolic in a way. Before last year’s Ramadan, I had read Michael Muhammad Knight’s The Taqwacores to prepare my Muslim mind state for a month of fasting. Some would say a punk book of kids toeing the line on the border of Islam may not be the best book to prepare oneself into a Muslim mind state, but for me, it was just what I needed to remind me that I belonged. Here I was a year later, taken on the Taqwacore journey of a lifetime, a pilgrimage both unlike and so similar to the one I had performed in Mecca years and years ago – a journey into my internal spiritual self, finding a collective peoples I connected with, and finally feeling I had found a family that I belonged to.

My mind rocked with a circle pit of images; people praying on cardboard boxes behind punk venues; skateboarding in saris; Mohawks and pop rocks; guitar stores and the Grammy Museum; punk colored hair wedding entourage; sleeping on rooftops under stars; Mike Knight in wedded turbaned bliss; late night desert drives; tagging on the trailer; storming the stage for Muhammad was a Punk Rocker; bouncing to Evil Eye; sweaty water drenched singalong skanking to Rumi was a Homo. A moshpit of madness in my memories. It was all I’d have left on my slow drive back home.

I opened the map and charted a course on the I-40. With only one goal in mind of returning to Los Angeles before the start of Ramadan, I turned the engine on my Yaris, aptly named ‘Johnny Quest’. It was time for the slow roll back home.

A punk rock circle pit is like tawaf around the Kabbah- looks like a circular chaotic pushing and shoving, but indeed, there is an internal order. Love and spirituality in the perceived chaos. And every now and then some guy copping a feel.

“Thanks for all you’ve done,” Michael Muhammad Knight said from behind the table with a pile of Osama Van Halen books. I looked at him quizzically. “You know, for the boys and the Taqwacores and stuff.”

I scoffed. “I didn’t do anything. I’m just a giddy fangurl that’s totally geeking out right now.” We were at an L.A. book reading for Mike and I had just met a large chunk of the cast and crew to The Taqwacores movie. It was a couple of weeks before his wedding and a couple weeks after I had met Mike for the first time in NYC.

He looked up at me from signing my book. “Really? But you are Taqwacore. You are what this is all about.”

I felt like I had just been christened. But the Muslim punk equivalent.

It was time for Isha prayer at the Vermont Mosque and I was standing outside waiting for Rasika Mathur. She was following me for her role as Fatima in The Taqwacores movie – the character is a Bengali activist punk chick and apparently, I was the best candidate for the job. My job was to download into her mind everything of what it meant to be a Muslim activist punk chick in a matter of six hours. She was going to be on set in Ohio later that week. She had come bouncing up to meet me on the steps in fur lined Uggs and a floppy knit cap, ridiculously enthusiastic.

Inside she did wudu with me and then put on a generic white cotton dupatta labeled in black marker “Property of the Islamic Center of Southern California” across the back. She sat in the back as she watched me pray. We went to a coffee shop afterwards and talked the night away.

It was later that I found out she had had an ‘accident’ with brownies the night before. Thoba, thoba, taking her to the mosque like that. I wondered if the shoulder angels would dock me points for that.

Allahu Alim.

“Knock, knock,” I heard Omar Waqar’s voice crackle through the phone. I had called Basim Usmani, lead singer of The Kominas, to fact check a blog I had been working on about their tour. It was the first day of The Kominas national summer tour and the phone was getting handed around to everyone in the car. I felt like the village bicycle. I hadn’t met anyone in person but Basim, and I was slightly tripping that I was talking to everyone. I had a minor question about Sarmust and before I knew it, I was getting a ‘Knock, Knock’ joke.

“Uh, who’s there?” I hesitated, smiling to myself. I mean, who intros themselves with a knock, knock joke?

“Allah.”

“Allah, who?”

“Hahaha…” Omar laughed on the other end of the line. I rolled my eyes and laughed back.

Eyad Zahra, film director of The Taqwacores, barged into the Oakland punk venue from behind the club where the barbeque had been set up. “Someone’s going to lead prayer out back! He’s going to do azaan right now! People are doing wudu in the bathroom!” We were hanging out inside the club, waiting for the punk show for the night to start. I looked outside; it was Maghrib time.

“No fucking way…!” Mike responded, jumping to his feet.

“Who is it?” I asked Eyad. I had a sneaking hunch.

“That kid, you know. Yousef is!” Eyad responded, knowingly. It figured. For the three years I’ve known Yousef, he was always the one who would call azaan no matter what the event – parties, bonfires, dance parties. We had bonded at a yuppie Muslim mixer where he had been wearing a Goldfinger shirt. He was the first guy to lead azaan, and the first guy to rock out in the pit. I’ve prayed behind him often and seen him pray everywhere.

I went out back to watch. Cardboard boxes were laid out flat next to a stack of crates that I can only presume had once held bottles of alcohol. Dogs were lounging around and a bunch of punks were smoking and drinking beer to the side. Smoke from the grill drifted over the graying blue sky as Yousef gave a beautiful azaan.

“I feel conflicted,” one of the Taqx guys said as Basim and I stood to the side watching people pray. “I feel like I should go pray.”

“Then go pray!” I said.

“But I have this beer.” He looked down sadly to his hand holding the beer.

“Go pray, man. Give me your beer. I’ll hold it for you.” Basim said reaching over and grabbing his glass.

Hands free of alcohol but with beer tainted breath, he jumped into the line on the cardboard box. With a quick hand raise to the ear, he joined the prayer.

It was like a scene out of the book. With one difference – this was unscripted and real.

“This is going to be the first time that I see The Kominas perform,” I said to Mike, standing next to him at the Oakland show as the guys set up. I was in shock and ridiculously full of anticipation. The first time I had written about the band was over three years ago, and I’d been following the band ever since. It was a blog post where I declared my crush for the boys in The Kominas and how I would fight Ashwairya Rai in a wet sari for them. They had only performed on the east coast, or Pakistan. They had never made it this far west. That is until this very moment, on their first national tour bringing the band to Khalifornia.

“Oh yeah?” Mike responded. “How are you feeling right now?”

Of course Mike would ask that. He was after all the narrator of this Taqwacore space. I was feeling overwhelmed, excited and ecstatic. Speechless. “I don’t know what I’m feeling right now. It’s crazy.”

I couldn’t believe after all was said and done, it had taken me this long to see them finally on stage. I stood near the back, afraid that I was too old for some up front pit action. They hit the stage. And I was done. Just like that. I was once again the teenaged punk rocker with colored hair. I was a giddy youth once again. Needless to say, I didn’t stay on the outskirt of the pit for long. I jumped right on in.

Mike comes up to me a few songs later and stood directly in front of me. Without saying a word, he held up his sneaker and motioned that I should take my shoes off and do the same. We both looked down at me feet. I was wearing black flip flops. I looked back up to him and slowly nodded my head no. He responded slowly nodding yes. I knew it was the night before his wedding, and this was a sort of bachelor party send off, but I was a girl, and there was no way that I was going to stand on that punk floor in my bare feet. I looked back at my feet and made eye contact with him and nodded no emphatically. He shrugged back and went on to the next person. A few minutes later, shoes showered the stage, bouncing off of the band members as they cringed and continued to play. The moshpit turned into a loving mess as guys stood arm in arm, doing the can-can in their socks.

“Pigs are haram! Pigs are haram!” Basim chanted into the mic. Soon everyone in the room was chanting. I followed the gaze of everyone in the room. There they were, four cops at the bar checking out the liquor license of the venue. In the middle of Sarmust’s set. They checked the paperwork of the venue, but kept a sly eye on the band. Coincidence? I think not.

We were in the banquet hall of an Indian restaurant in a strip mall somewhere in the middle of San Jose. The wedding hadn’t started yet and I was sitting on the groom’s side, next to Rasika – I was her plus one to the Taqwacore wedding of the year – and Faith Gobidas, who was the stylist for the movie. All the rest of the guys had disappeared, we had suspected to be involved in the wedding somehow. We were sitting there drinking our chai waiting for the wedding to begin when my phone rang. It was Siddhartha, former fellow blogger and fellow Taqx geek who had flown out for the wedding. I looked around, he was nowhere to be see.

“Where are you?” he asked me.

“I’m sitting at the table with Rasika and Faith. Why? Where are you? The wedding is about to start!” I responded with hushed urgency.

“I know! I’m in the back of the restaurant. Mike is asking, ‘where’s Taz?’ He’s saying that the wedding can’t start until you join his procession and walk out with him. Get the girls and get back here!” I was needless to say, giddy and shocked.

We walked to a back room and there was Mike, in a red pagli around his head and handsome cream colored kurta. Standing behind him were The Kominas, people from the movie, people who I’ve read about in his memoirs. He smiled when he saw me. “You’re one of my people! Get back there!” I joined the punk entourage posse next to Siddhartha. The dhol player started playing immediately and walked forward. Everyone else followed behind, Mike and his mother leading the crowd. Whooping and hollering to the beat of the drum, the colored hair punk posse procession let everyone at the wedding know that the groom’s side was a force to be reckon with. And somehow I was now one of them.

The Taqx crew was outside of the wedding in the strip mall parking lot milling around my car. The food had been eaten, the cake had been cut, slide show had been shown. People were slowly filtering out. Imran Malik, drummer for The Kominas, and Prop Anon were taking turns riding around the parking lot on my skateboard, which I always kept in the trunk of my car. I wanted to skate while wearing my sari, which is why we were at the car. A few other people rolled over, but they were rolling a shopping cart around the parking lot, with someone sitting in the cart. Skateboards and shopping carts, how very Taqwacore.

Shahjehan Khan of The Kominas came out from inside and called us all over. “Hey,” he screamed out. “They’re calling us back in!” We walked over. “So they want us to do Qawalli. It’s kind of like a battle, the brides side will be on one side and Mike’s side on the other. And we’ll be singing off back and forth. Cool?” Omar started strumming his hand made hand held instrument, and the crew started humming a beat, with The Kominas leading the way. We walked into the restaurant like that, all eyes on us as the entourage went to where the bride’s girls were standing.

The ‘Qawalli-Off’ started with songs about the groom and bride respectively, and ventured into Bollywood songs. It didn’t go back and forth as much as it went who could sing louder and remember more words then the other team. It went back and forth like that for almost half an hour. At the end they were trying to figure out who won the Qawalli-Off. “Auntie, who do you think won?” Omar sweetly asked an elderly auntie that was sitting at the neighboring table watching the whole back and forth.

She gave a desi nod of approval and motioned to the groom’s side. “You guys did, of course.” Of course. The Kominas were singing on the groom’s side. It was no competition.

Rasika and I rolled our longboard skateboards down the slight hill from the gas station to the Jack In the Box parking lot. We were somewhere off the I-5, somewhere between San Jose and Los Angeles in the dead of midday Central Valley heat. I had gained momentum and skidded the board to the stop. I looked over my shoulder. Rasika was rolling just behind. Up next to my parked car at the gas station Faith was hula hooping. Just beyond that Siddhartha was sitting back against the wall in some shade, sipping on iced coffee, watching it all.

It was a scene. If you know what I mean.

Imran and I skated, beach to our right, Venice boardwalk to our left, Shahj and Faith left behind in our skating dust. It was afternoon bliss. Beach wind whipped our hair and the pavement was clean, oh so clean. I had brought my extra skateboard from home when I met up with The Kominas in Los Angeles. We stopped at the skate shop to oil the boards, and stopped at a t-shirt shop so that Imran could buy a Misfits shirt. He put it on, right then and there. We skated for a while, long while, long enough for me to get a heart shaped blister on my right foot.

Back at the car with an hour left before the guys had to be at that night’s venue to setup, we realized that something was amiss. Imran had lost his iPhone. An adventure ensued that included stoned blonde chicks next to where the phone was lost saying that a man in a guitar shirt and Viking gloves had taken the phone, to going to the Apple store and turning on the gps device of the phone, to trolling Third Street Santa Monica looking for a man on a bike in a guitar shirt and Viking gloves.

As I walked down Third Street, I saw him. He was sitting next to his bike, wearing a Hawaiian shirt covered in guitars and wearing BIKING gloves. He was talking to a homeless woman. I signaled to Imran and he walked over. “I think you might have my phone?” Imran asked. He did. No fight was had. Imran tried to reward the guy with money, but the man in the guitar shirt asked that the money be given to the homeless woman instead. Hugs were exchanged. We ran to my car and I raced through LA traffic to get the boys to the venue as fast as possible.

The short scrawny black kid screamed like a little girl, with an echo that reverberated on the walls inside of the Ralphs. We all looked to see what the hell was going on. It was 1 am and Faith was at the checkout counter buying a huge jug of Chablis. We had gone to Ralphs looking for duct tape. The kid that had screamed was in line right behind Faith. Omar and I looked at each other trying to make sense of what the fuck was going on.

Tickling was the running gag of the night, and Basim had just run over to tickle Faith when the kid had let out the scream. He let out a sigh when he realized that Basim wasn’t coming over to him. “I thought you was gonna beat me up because of what I said to her. I was bout ready to call up my Daddy and tell him I was getting beat up in Ralphs.” He said this holding up his phone in his left hand, shaking. He let out a nervous laugh.

“What the fuck was that?” we asked Faith as we got in the car. “What did he say to you?”
Faith was cracking up. “He looked at the Chablis and said, ‘Yo pussie’s gonna get wet, your titties gonna come out tonight!’ And right then is when Basim came over to tickle me! The kid thought he was going to get beat!”

We laughed, and laughed and laughed. That catch phrase never got old. Though, it did make us look really dirty every time any of us said it for the rest of the tour.

Omar, Basim, and Imran had eyes glazed over like mullah kids in a Kabbah gift shop. We were at a music store, guitars, mics and drums lined the walls. Basim had thrown a tipped over drum back at Imran during the set the night before and the skin had ripped. I took pictures like crazy. “Why are you taking so many pictures?” Omar asked with a teasing smile.

“Because…!” I responded. “I’m in the music store with Sarmust and The Kominas! This is crazy!” Sure, the boys may have been friends by then, and actually more like family, but I was still me, and prone to momentary lapses of fangurl geeking out.

The dented “Stop” sign had “Lies” spray painted over it. It was behind a glass casing with a picture of Shahj and Basim placed just above it. It was very formal looking. We were at the Grammy Museum, a gorgeously curated three level exhibit with memorabilia from every significant musical genre. Including, The Taqwacores.

We all stood there stunned, silently staring at the exhibit. The Taqx crew was being trailed by a PR person to the museum, an LA Times reporter, and the documenting film crew with a video camera and boom mic. It was the first time I’d seen the media frenzy over The Kominas up close and personal. It was overwhelming, to say the least.

“Oh my god! Look at that!” Shahj exclaimed. He pointed to the space just below the stop sign. It was a piece on Rage Against the Machine. “That’s Tom Morollo’s HAT!” Indeed. Morollo’s faded salmon colored baseball cap was on display. So I guess, technically, that means The Kominas had one up on Rage Against the Machine, nah?

It was 3am. The Muslim punks ordered matzo ball soup, knishes, and potato pancakes.

“How much does the bread, Challah, cost?” someone in the Taqx posse asked. I didn’t know who it was because I was shaking my head in shame.

We had brought the Muslim punks to Canter’s, the infamous Los Angeles 24 hours Jewish deli. The Los Angeles show earlier that night was odd – the space was glam with stark white pillars, shiny silver curtains and plastic looking with Hollywood people. The space was akin to what a Bollywood Vegas lounge stage might possibly look like. All the band needed was matching wide collared white suits. Instead, Basim lined his eyes with kohl. It was enough for glam effect to be had.

Muslim punks in the Jewish deli. Guess a little badmash should have been expected.

I smelled sage smoke and heard loud drumming coming out of the space that the boys were supposed to be performing at for the Orange County show. I was nervous, because this was the show I had organized. I was afraid nothing was going to work out as planned.

I peaked in. Feather-not-dot Indians were tribal dancing in a circle in the room. I hadn’t been expecting that. We were in El Centro de Cultural de Mexico, and I had been warned, though the local kids often do punk shows in the space, that this particular early evening the space was being used for salsa dancing classes. I would be able to claim the space after. Salsa, pow wow, same diff, it seemed. The dancers cleared out in enough time for the show’s 10pm start but I like thinking about the merging of feather and dot Indians converging in that space.

The show was gritty and community space oriented. Most of the people in the crowd were the Chicano teen punks that were excited to see the “Musulman” punk band. They had a circle pit going in back. Arjun Ray, guitarist of The Kominas, the next morning stated in awe that it was the first time he had ever seen a circle pit at a Kominas show.

A long haired Native American guy that looked like he had smoked a fair share of peyote in his days, introduced himself to me in the hallway as the band performed their set. The guy was selling Native stuff, like patches or t-shirts that said, “Homeland Security; Fighting Terrorism since 1492.”

“Hey man… These guys are cool! They are real good!” the guy said in a doped up drawl. “I like how he’s playing without his shoes on. They are like US. It’s how the Natives do it. It brings you closer to the earth!” I nodded my head and smiled. He was pointing to how Basim was playing barefoot. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Basim was barefoot because the rest of the guys had thrown Basim’s shoes in a dumpster earlier in the tour. He was borrowing shoes along the way.

I found Basim later outside smoking and talking with the guy. I was glad the connection had been made. “Hey Taz! Do you know what this guy said?” Basim asked, motioning to the guy next to him. “He said Native Indians would put their hair up in Mohawks to bring them closer to the sun.” I smiled back. I thought about how the hawk could have possibly transitioned from native culture to punk culture. But in spaces like this one in Orange County, the merge wasn’t that farfetched.

I found out later that he was the same guy that started the circle pit at that night’s show.

We tried to get Basim to pose for a picture with the mohawked cockatoo at the hookah bar on Anaheim’s Gaza Strip that night. He tried dancing with the bird instead. We rushed him out before his finger could get bit off.

“I was so scared!” Nyle Usmani said, his face that expression you get after riding a really scary roller coaster. Instead, we were sitting by the fountain at Yogurtland at midnight. Nyle, the undergrad-researcher-turned-hype man for The Kominas, had been running in circles bare feet in the fountain as Imran chased him. I was the referee.

“What’s he going to do, Nyle? It’s only Imran! It’s not like he’s going to eat you or beat you,” I implored, laughing till tears ran from my eyes. They kept running in circles in the fountain, and I kept refereeing until both Nyle and Basim fell in the fountain. Imran remained nimble-footed and dry. And then we hit the road to Austin, Texas.

The Border Patrol peered into Johnny Quest. Pink streaked Imran was driving at the wheel, I with my fuchsia streaks, was sitting in the passenger seat and in the back seat with the multicolored purple and pink Mohawk you had Basim. Perfect, I thought to myself. Muslim colored hair punks getting questioned by Border Patrol. This is going to be fun. We weren’t even crossing the border, we were simply driving east on the I-10, somewhere between El Paso and Austin.

“Where are you going?” the Border Patrol man asked, suspiciously.

“Austin,” Imran replied.

“What are you doing there?”

“We’re playing. We’re in a band,” there was the subtlest hesitation in his voice as he said.

“Where are your instruments, then?” he searched, eyeing Basim in the back seat.

“They are in the other car behind us. They are a couple hours behind us.”

“We drove ahead,” Basim added loudly from the backseat.

“You. Where were you born?” he asked Basim.

“MANHATTAN. NEW YORK!” Basim screamed, or maybe he just said it really really loud, in an exaggerated New York accent. I looked down to try to keep from laughing.

The Border Patrol stepped back and let us by.

We sat on the curb outside of the 7-11 in Austin, Texas at 2am. I was sitting between Imran and Basim as they ate 7-11 food. I think. I’m not quite sure, I was in a deep haze and my contacts were bleary. We had been driving for 24 hours straight and the boys had just waken me up. We were sitting with a couple of friends of the band from Houston, who were “hosting” the guys.

At that moment, a homeless dirty man started ambling in our direction. “Hey man,” he drunkenly stumbled. “Do you want some cigarettes?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of cigarettes, still wrapped in plastic.

“Naw. That’s cool. Thanks,” Basim responded for all of us. “I don’t want to take cigarettes from you. You look like you’ll need them.”

“I got plenty,” the homeless guy responded. He reached into pockets and pulled out multiple wrapped cigarette boxes. He had at least five. “Well, then. Do you want a beer?” He starts pulling out cans of beers also from his pockets. It was a wonder to me how he was able to pack so many cigarettes and cans of beer on him. I cocked my head to the side, mesmerized by the interaction.

“No… Keep’ em.” Basim said.

I hadn’t been in Austin for that long, but I did know the homeless in Austin are really generous when it comes to beer and cigarettes. “Keep Austin Weird.” No doubt, no doubt.

The Sunday night show in Austin was hot and muggy. I was frustrated from the day – I knew my time with the boys was about to end. But all my frustrations left when The Kominas hit the stage. Out of all five of the shows I had gone to, it was the only show that I let myself wild out like I was a teenager again. I bounced, I skanked, I screamed. A small core group of fans sang along to all the songs up front and danced like crazy, myself included. The top of my head was hot; I was wet from getting water dumped on me by Nyle; and I was completely out of breath by the show’s end. It was the smallest crowd of all the venues I’d been to with the band, but it was the most fun of them all. Omar played drums while playing the guitar and singing; Sean Padilla of Cocker Spaniel spontaneously jumped on stage to pick up on the bass guitar when Basim jumped in the crowd to sing; Prop Anon chipped his tooth; Basim kept getting electrocuted by the mic; and Nyle even jumped on the drums when Imran jumped off to sing.

And did I forget to mention? Kourash Poursalehi of Vote Hezbollah was there too. He sang the last song of the night. ‘Muhammad was a Punk Rocker’ – the lyrics written by Mike and found on the first page of The Taqwacores book. For that song, everyone stormed the stage.

A perfect punk rock send off, some might say.

“MAPS suck!” I was tagging on the side of the trailer, highlighting my disdain for the Muslim American Princess types. The boys were packing up late after the Austin show, and I was alone on the road side of the trailer. As I was I was finishing the tagging the letter P, I felt a whoosh over my left should and a loud crash of rock on metal. A drive by had just been committed.

“What the fuck was that!?!” Omar screamed from behind the trailer. “Did they hit you?”

I nodded my head no. I was surprisingly unfazed.

“They can’t do that! Come on guys, let’s go!” Omar led the charge, chasing the car down the street. In his bare feet (he had been shoeless for the past few days). Imran and Basim joined Omar in the chase as Shahj stayed behind to video the whole event on his fancy new flip camera. Obviously, the guys didn’t get far on foot.

I bent down and found a large piece of twisted metal. It said, “Apple Bottom.” If it was a hate crime, I couldn’t tell if it was because I was Muslim, punk, or had no booty.

“Who named you?” I asked the woman behind the counter at Whataburger in Austin at 2am. She was an African American woman, probably in her early twenties. Her name tag said, “Mecca Johnson.”

“I dunno,” she replied, with a slight southern twang. “I think my daddy named me.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding my head. I wondered what her father’s connection to Mecca was. And what symbolism resonated at this moment that our server was named ‘Mecca.’

Basim glanced over at her name tag and smiled. “You have a beautiful name,” he said warmly, twinkle in his eyes.

I brought everyone breakfast the next day. Donuts and fried chicken. It was an absurd breakfast, but they were punk guys – to them it was the perfect combination.

We sat outside in front of Kourosh’s condo lazing about in the heat till it was time for them to go. Their next show was in Louisiana, eight hours away. With 1,500 miles between myself and home, I decided this is where we were to part ways. I had a long solo drive home. I hugged them all goodbye one by one, my heart cracking a little more with each hug I gave.

With a blink of an eye, they were all gone. I was alone in Austin, Texas.

Under the weight of the hot Texas sun, I walked alone to my car and drove around aimlessly. But eventually, I pulled my car over to the side of the road and cried.

My Taqwacore pilgrimage had been completed. I had fallen in love with the Taqwacores and been accepted into the folds. I had found a family that knew me in a way that my own family never would, one that prayed, punked, and politicked together. In this space, I had the freedom to be myself, I had found myself, and I had let myself go, hopelessly and head over heels. I had punk rocked and prayed and loved moshed laughed skated cuddled rocked touched kissed and cried.

I couldn’t find words to explain what I had just experienced. It wasn’t just the story of following a band, or going on a book adventure. It was about love, punk, and punk drunk love. People who got you, really got you, and all that came with.

It was time to go home.

My life had been forever changed. I finally knew what it really meant to be Taqwacore.

Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is an activist and writer living in Los Angeles. She is the Founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), an aspiring novelist and a long-time blogger for the popular South Asian blog Sepia Mutiny.