This is my home you wanted to see
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Sarah Al-Sarraj - Olive tree
Mad wardtime writings of a sad mad runaway muslim transfem dyke
Poems I wrote in the ward
Breaking down these walls
is such a wonderful idea
for a second date… Don't you think?
Imagine just coming here.
Without these wristbands.
As people… free.
We are only people when we are free.
We can take down their bricks and books.
De-religionize, De-Colonise, De-"sane"itize.
And build our dreams from the ashes.
My 3rd birthday
I was born in a place like this
when I was 4 or 5
and I think now
may be my birthday.
I'm 3 years old now.
Jaded by these walls
and the walls before.
In these unhomely homes.
In these rubbery beds
I am different from her – the one on the outside.
The theatre ends at the gate
and inside,
another begins
Happy (?) Birthday(?!) to me (?!?)
I'm 3 years old.
I fucked myself in the ward today
The towel tucked in, adding friction to the door.
The bucket full, pressed to the door.
The ripples tell me of other people
Fluidic counter surveillance
I fucked myself in the ward today.
One earphone plugged in
r/GWASapphic
That one track I keep coming back to.
"I'm going to take a shower"
I am not in fact showering.
I let my hands do their magic
over my changing body.
Hack-fucking. Fuck-hacking.
I wonder now after 7 years of this praxis,
how many of us have done this here.
And how these acts connect us –
The mad-sexuals, the sexual-mads.
Transsexual nomadics
I sit in my room this morning.
The sun is beautiful, bright.
Look at that paper they gave me
written in ciphertext,
hieroglyphic, arcane.
It was the key to some home.
One that I'll leave soon
And then to another
And then to another
And then to another
…..
And then die.
Is there really a home for me?
A home that is truly a home?
Autodiasporic existence
Is there a place where I am not diasporic?
My body?
My home?
My body feels diasporic –
Not mine to define
Not mine to construct
Home doesn't even exist anymore
So settle down, my tired self,
into this desolate garden.
Into this world where everything is diasporic.
Even you to yourself
What can I do now?
Now that my home is taken?
Now that I'm wilting away?
Now that colours are grey?
If I am to "occupy" and yet not occupy the self,
what then does all of this mean?
The warden – hailed the saint.
The self – tainted, unsacred.
Do I learn to occupy space?
or do I let space(s) occupy me?
Disch
a
r
g
e
It is Sunday, the day it never happens… yet.
I am going back into the world.
Or am I?
Outside the ward
On mad spirals
I woke up three times
It happens again
again
again
gaining something
losing something more
losing myself in its twirls
twirling
Alone
Together
In groups of 4, 5 ,6
of loneliness
of love
of lust
of longing
long before we knew what we are
we the mad
the insane
the batshit crazy
The committee
has decided
that you have gone through enough
number of traumatic instances.
Take this C with your PTSD.
You've earned it!
Congratulations.
Enjoy the shittiest stay in this hospital.
Have a shitty time.
:)
Wait just a moment
for the skies to bleed again.
Open your umbrella
like everyone else.
Look at your umbrella, leaking blood,
and you're drenched in blood.
Just you.
Alone.
I don't even interrogate fear anymore.
It breaks me more than it already does
even without me actually thinking.
Lonely, alone, wilting away.
On us
We are pens of broken cases
of bent nibs
of living through war
of loving through war
Our love heals our broken nibs
as we weave our tales.
Of rage
Of riverbanks where we kissed
Of bookstores where we wept
Of cuddling in psych wards
Of impossible possibilities
Of madness profound
Laughter (Wrote this just after being rescued from the conversion therapy center)
I called a friend.
Laughed.
The exorcism was,
weirdly,
hilarious!
There they were,
trying to
undo my folds,
untie my knots
& set me free™.
I laughed too soon.
But I am glad I did.
Fluids in my veins,
will you save me from my demons?
I assure you I have plenty.
That's what they said you'll do.
Please don't disappoint me.
What I want for Netanyahu
There is a place
in tirur, Kerala
where they electrocute the gay kids.
I want Netanyahu to be dragged there.
I want him to be strapped to that table.
I want those electrodes connected to him
I want to forego the partial anesthesia
I want to electrocute Netanyahu.
He deserves all the pain.
Not queer kids.
Not the kids of gaza.
Queering the Grippy Sock
When I think about queerness, the first image is this: me strapped to a hospital table; I am partially anesthetized. I cannot move. The doctor says, “sister, 20cc of testosterone,” and the nurse draws the injection. The doctor jabs me without a hint of kindness in his eyes.
“You’ll be okay, <dead name>, we will solve your hormone issues.”
I often wake up to some rendition of it. I freeze at random times of the day. The testosterone shots, the electric shocks, the exorcisms, the rapes.
I sometimes wish to escape this state of being. I have tried. These tries have resulted in visits to many a suicide ward.
I once told a friend, just after getting out of the ward, that my life outside the ward is mostly theatre. I feel this is something central to mad lives: we have our spaces, howsoever the world doesn’t want us to. We, the queer and mad, are insurrectionists wherever we go, whichever place we enter. The mad are not desirable to the world, even in madhouses. We madden and queer spaces, conversations, relationships. The mad is queer in some way i feel. The ways how madness is constructed by the society engenders it in queer ways – a non-binary engendering that portrays us as both subjects to be monsters that need to be put down and at the same time, beings at precarious weakness that merit forced “care.” The queer subject position has been made mad by the psychiatric establishment and society at large, citing us as abnormal in their DSMs, their mosques, and their temples. Because of this way that madness and queerness are constructed, to queer without maddening is in its core a succumbing to the neoliberal, capitalist, ableist urge to purge all those who are outside desirabilities and functionalities and the vice versa is denying the queerness of the mad.
The mad is given the title of demonic. We are witches and demons, those meant to be burnt, exorcised, cursed, cast out – of care, love, families, etc.
The history of people: mostly cis white men in the English-speaking world and cis Brahmin men here in India. Attempting to eliminate madness is linked to histories of anti-queer/trans violence. Rekers and lovaas, two of the founding members of applied behavioral analysis (ABA), a treatment method that forcibly trains autistics to act neurotypical, used the techniques they invented to perform conversion therapies1 on a gender nonconforming person. It is to be noted that it took them till 2020 to put an end to this, when the practice of ABA has been extensively criticized by the autistic community. They want us to not be us. It is a eugenic project. We are the witches whom they burn. There have been priests who claim to beat the madness and queerness out of us. Their equation of queerness to madness, as something to be cured of.
The madhouse is a queer space since a lot of queer folks exist in these spaces, but also because these spaces build solidarities and care in very queer ways. Fuck, the first girl I kissed was a fellow comrade in madness at one of the madhouses.
The immense amounts of violence the outside world pushes onto those of us in the margins pushes us into spaces of madness. There, in the wards of mental hospitals, in rehabs, we accumulate. We talk amongst ourselves, we bring forth mad, queer love, kinship, and solidarity. The ward as a site of mad4mad intimacy cannot be ignored. It is definitely political, both by our caregivers and the psych ward staff telling us “not to talk to that person too much” or even forcibly separating two psychiatrically incarcerated individuals doing anything together that they deem inappropriate.
Fuck their propriety.
Fuck their policing.
Fuck their “care.”
Most of the recovery and healing force has definitely come from those mad4mad intimacies. I feel that, to heal from the horrors of their lives, the mad rely on their comrades in madness. Only those versed in the language of pain can converse with those who speak it, and oftentimes, it is not the therapist-psychiatrist nexus. These people, after all, police us, deem us as those un-cultured cretins to “make right” or “civilized,” which is essentially a colonial project. They impose hierarchies among us, from the mad person who can serve the colonial capitalist world to the mad who has to be locked up – the desirable and undesirable ones. They further the society’s urges to attain “normalcy” by legitimizing anti-mad hate. After all, if a certain group of people is looked down upon by a “scientific” field of study, the pre-existing social antagonisms are amplified and new ones created.
Growing up in this world as a mad child, one is othered in one’s home. This, I have felt, makes me afraid of closeness because the ones supposed to be “close” to me… The mad queer child is given the burden of being their own parent, to withstand violence. No wonder many of us do not see adulthood. And one of the mechanisms is one they call “special schools,” places where children are put on chains. The fraction of us who survive this and make it to colleges is abysmal. Why is it that I do not see my kin in the classrooms where our lives are discussed? These systems train the mad child into obedience, into conformity, into the hands of death.
The system is far too corrupt. The blood of my kin stains the bricks of the madhouse.
To queer the grippy sock, one must burn it to the ashes. Let psychiatry be the one that burns. It has taken far too many lives.
I am tired of the stare of the hospital guard
I am tired of the restraints
I am tired of the fact the psych ER is the only place i can go to get emergency care
I am tired of losing my mad, queer kin
I am tired of this system that slaps me when i need a hug
The replacement of the psychiatric institution must be the site of mad4mad care first and foremost. It should be a space where we can coalesce and engage in knowledge production on our selves. Too long has the psychiatric institute dictated how mad lives should be. Mad knowledge of self and community care must be accepted and hold priority over the present-day ableist sanist psychiatric structures. One needs medical care, yes. But one, more than anything, needs care, and if medical “care” is not caring and kind, it needs rethought.
I wrote this in parts. never in a bed that was my own, for I did not have one. I wrote this in mad rage and sadness. I wrote this because I wanted to be held. I want to be treated with love. I want my people to be treated the same way.
here’s to breaking down the madhouse walls and maddening the madhouse.
Postscript
We sit now, nearing 2 years of the escalation of genocidal action of the zionist forces of israel, united states, india, germany, UK, and the rest. All hospitals have been critically damaged. The entity has shown how diametrically opposed it is to the very existence of care and caring, in its indiscriminate terrorist acts in gaza and the west bank. We, the free mad people of the world should now, more than ever, having known how essential care is to life and living, stand with the palestinian people. Wear a keffieh to the psych ward. Talk about the palestinian cause amongst our mad kin. Recruit. Act. Engage. Now is the time to engage in the most radical use of our mad freedom, to ensure freedom for the people in palestine and ensure that the zionist entity vanishes from the face of the earth. Let us renew commitment to the death of the colony – in palestine, kashmir, congo, sudan, and everywhere else. Madness tells us to see the hurting. Let us listen, and let this inform our ways of acting in the world.