“Song of Many Combs and a Single Mirror,” by Shadab Zeest Hashmi (Poetry ’09)
2009 poetry alum Shadab Zeest Hashmi was recently featured in The Punch. Read an excerpt of Hashmi’s essay below:
Song of Many Combs and a Single Mirror
Seven weeks before my wedding day, half my face became paralyzed. No matter how much I willed my face into a smile or frown, half my face remained creaseless, still as stone. It was an attack of facial palsy, resulting likely from a viral infection. There was no cure. My bridal jewelry had arrived that week and my mother wanted me to try it on. There I sat, at her dressing table, holding a paisley medallion of rubies and gold, that sits on the forehead, hanging from a string of small beads. This “tika,” a traditional bride’s jewel, really my favorite of all the pieces, is crafted as a centerpiece, shimmering on the forehead where the mystic “inner eye” resides — the noblest part of the head we prostrate in Muslim prayer. To me, on the eve of separation from my parental home, the tika was symbolic of selfhood, of a refinement of perception or the aspiration thereof — in preparation to take on life as an independent adult. Now, as I held it up to my forehead, it divided my face into two: one, animated with emotion, tremulous, the other completely detached and motionless. Facial symmetry is not a matter of deliberation or consciousness; it is simply subordinate to a particular neurological sub-system, one that was malfunctioning. When I cried, tears came from only one eye.
In the days that followed, my mother gave me saffron tea and vitamins, taught me face yoga, took me for therapy at the Army Hospital in Peshawar where they tried to wake up my muscles by giving small electric shocks to the affected side of my face. When the physiotherapist, dressed in his military uniform, heard that my wedding was just around the corner, he was visibly saddened and he told me in the kindest voice to not give up.
Seeing myself in the mirror, split in half, was one thing, but being unable to form audible words with my partially immovable mouth while teaching creative writing — a course that continued up until a fortnight before marriage — was even more painful. Talking to my students about coaxing the spirit and polishing the craft led me to consider the poignant dynamics between voice and visibility, authority, work, worth, spirit, silencing and invisibility.
Read the rest of this essay here: https://thepunchmagazine.com/the-byword/non-fiction/song-of-many-combs-and-a-single-mirror
