TAQWACORE WEBZINE

It was another Taqwacore road trip, from Oakland to Los Angeles. This was strange considering that Los Angeles was home turf, I just happened to move to Oakland rather recently. It seemed like all my Taqwacore adventures revolved around a trip of some sort – there was never a semblance of “home,” which is ironic considering the fictional premise around Taqwacore revolves around a stationary punk house. The truth is the scenesters are spread across the country and no one in their twenties/early thirties really has a secure place to call home. We are all Amazing Ayyub, looking for that next couch to crash on.

I picked up a punk in Fremont, in a neighborhood that reeked of Indian food at 11 in the morning. A family friend, we knew each other as toddlers and reconnected as grown-ups when we realized that we had both been that other Muslim kid at the punk show. He had read all of Knight’s books, heard/read all of my stories, downloaded all the songs by all the bands. He took off a week of work to ride down with me to The Taqwacores Motion Picture Los Angeles premiere screening. It was showing in Los Angeles and Irvine all week.

As we got in the car he suspiciously asked if we were going to listen Florence and The Machines. I looked at him side-eyed. He said anytime he got into a girl’s car, that was the anthem of the moment. In the 90s version, it would have been The Cranberries or Fiona Apple or Alanis Morisette. I told him that I did have some songs on the iPod, but that we could skip it for sure. Instead, we played a playlist titled “Rasika’s Punk Education.” When I heard Rasika Mathur was looking for a punk girl education for her role as Fatima before heading to The Taqwacores set in Ohio, I had created a mixed CD of all my favorite punk music to give to her. Yes, I made her a mixtape. As a So Cal straight-edge punk that went through it in the 90s, of course I had to include Goldfinger, Homegrown, Save Ferris, MXPX, NOFX, Mad Caddies, The Ataris, and Bouncing Soul. And after that playlist was complete, we moved on to Lisa Loeb and Cyndi Lauper.

Click clack went the heels of the tall Persian woman in the bright purple mini-dress. I looked at her shoes. They had the iconic red soles. Louboutins. “I can’t believe she wore those shoes to a punk movie!” I whispered to the girl I was with.

“Those are $700 shoes!” she whispered back. I couldn’t help but think how that contrasted with how broke the bands were living these days. At least the director, Eyad Zahra, had kept it real with his shoes. He was rocking the Converse with his suit.

We were at The Taqwacore premiere and it was clearly a different crowd. It was the type of crowd that as an L.A. girl, I tried to avoid. The Hollywood types. But more – it was the Hollywood Muslim have-lots-of-money types. Totally not gutterpunk types.

It didn’t really bother me until we got to the question and answer portion of the film. It was my third time watching the movie, and this time, it felt different than the first time. The movie to me was no longer a fiction, it had become reality. And in the reality of taqwacore, so much had changed in the “real scene.” Taqwacore folks were rejecting the term “taqwacore”, there was squabbling and what was once a cuddly bunch had seemingly dispersed. Or grown up. I guess. If the storyline were to parallel reality, I’d say we were at the point where the fight in the moshpit had just ended. As the credits rolled on the movie, that was all I could think about, and how none of the real punks bothered (or could afford) to show up to this screening.

As the lights came on after the show, I looked around. I was the only one rocking the colored hair. No mohawks, no punk gear, no buttons. The moderator began by saying people had walked out on the movie. they hadn’t expected it to be so “controversial” and “offensive.”

But as Eyad said later, “It’s a punk movie. If people aren’t walking out of the movie that means that it’s watered down. And then we weren’t being true to the essence of being punk. It’s a good thing.”

The questions from the audience though, were so….indirect and circular. So academic, in-genuine and ivory tower. There was the question of how the movie didn’t reflect the older generation. Questions about how this movie would be perceived differently in a Muslim country and how we wasn’t representing that. Questions about American Muslim identities and how this was “the exaggerated characterizations.” Questions about how Rabeyah’s character ended on her knees. (“Actually, she was standing up at the end.”)

“I just wanted to give that guy with the question that just didn’t end,” my friend told me later, “I just wanted to hand him a Black Flag album and tell him to go listen to it. That all his answers were there.”

But what bugged me the most is how the characters in the movie were “othered” by the audience. The idea that there could be Muslim kids out there that actually went to punk shows and went to Friday prayer, a muted version of what happened in the movie/book, seemed outlandish. The idea that there was a “real” version of this, never came up. It was simply a fiction.

It made it feel exotified. Hot Topic-ified.

Because the thing is, for me, whatever this is. This scene, gang, virtual twitter/facebook posse or whatever it is, it is real. And though it may have publicly revolved around a couple of the bands, there’s a whole mess of punks that are in the scene that aren’t in bands, much like the archetypes of the book. It has been fascinating to meet and document the many many people that Taqwacore has made my life path cross with. You have the exotic dancer covered in tattoos with hijabs that she rocks sometimes too; the pediatrician that rocked the Goldfinger pit regularly leading prayers on cardboard boxes at punk venues; the photographer that intersperses his (photo-/vodka-) shots with “yallah” and “wallahi”; the kilt wearing tattoo artist motorcycle enthusiast; the Lebanese guitarist Cal student with a penchant for pro-Palestine protests; the fashionista with clothing line; and you even have the Hindu Bengali guitar playing phD student that I proudly prayed my Eid prayers behind even though he wasn’t Muslim. But what does that really mean, anyways…

I guess my point is, that we, the punks that just happened to be Muslim in this country, we exist, whether we had the book (or the documentary, or the photo book, the music) or not. And as we grapple with what it means to be an American Muslim, whether spiritually, politically, or culturally, we would have still brought in elements of punk sensibility. It’s just that Mike Knight’s creation of the book The Taqwacores helped us find each other.

What I had hoped for the audience to have gotten out of the Q&A but I didn’t, was that. That it was real. That there were people that struggled with being boxed in and were struggling to create their own box. That the movie, book, scene, people were folks who had gone through that same experience too. And what I really hope to come out of this movie getting out there, is that there will be teenage versions of myself – Muslim kids going punk shows on Saturday nights and Sunday school the next morning – that are able to meet other like minded folks and not give up on life. That they don’t see themselves on the margins. That they have a punk house they belong to, as virtual it may be.

I do wonder though if everyone moves out of the taqwacore house in the book, and the reporter comes looking to glorify Jehangir and finds nothing but remnants – I can’t help and think what the parallel reality of that is. Or if this is it.

+++

But fuck it. I’m going skateboarding on the beach with Amazing Ayyub tomorrow and there’s something punk as fuck about that. And maybe the blurred lines with reality and fiction aren’t really that bad. And maybe when all the glitter and glam of Hollywood dust settles, connections will still exist. Inshallah.

+++

Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is an activist and writer living in Oakland. 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.