Migration and Moving Beyond Borders by Ambreen Ishrat
In the stillness of night, I dream of water: wave after wave gushing in, filling my room’s walls and ceiling with an aqua hue.
I know my mother also dreams of water, just like her own mother and grandmother did. I know that one day, my own daughter would dream of the same liquid-- lucid, fluid, colorless and shapeless dreams of water, the brook, and the sea.
Water is the web that connects three generations and beyond.
The water in my grandmother’s and mother’s dreams is laced with blood. Mine is tinged with salt, which stings as much as it heals.
My mother and grandmother dream of rivers. They dwelt in the city of rivers, Dhaka, the former East Pakistan and present day Bangladesh. I dream of the sea, being a dweller of the coastal metropolis of Karachi, a city of the former West Pakistan.
We dream of brooks and seas because the women of our clan are beings of water, the elements of the air and the fire, but never of the earth. For decades, we have been searching for pieces of land to call our homes.
We are nomads not out of choice and free will but due to circumstances. We cannot ground and root ourselves anywhere. This is our legacy. This is our fate.
Our dreams are the epiphanies of the souls of nomads, those who have uprooted themselves from what they had always known as their homes. They transcended borders, continents and cultures not out of choice but out of fear, not once, but many times.
Multiple migrations and diasporas lead to multiple layerings of consciousness, overlapping experiences and juxtaposed identities. A nomadic and migrant woman’s journey to discover the true meaning of homeland leads her to seek meaning and existence not only inward, but outward.
The elements of water and the wind compose the immigrant.
In Shame, Salman Rushdie ponders the act of migration. He says: “And I have a theory that the resentments we mohajirs [immigrants] engender have something to do with our conquest of the force of gravity. We have performed the act of which all men anciently dream, the thing for which they envy the birds; that is to say, we have flown.”
Water is the sign of progression. Its process is to change shape and form to subsist: freezing, thawing, evaporating, pouring, gushing, and receding. Water has no beginning or ending. It journeys and makes its way on earth.
All tributaries, streams, and brooks fall into that larger chasm, the sea. There is one source.
We move beyond borders. This passage also means exploring and not becoming confined, engaging and not just defending, expanding and not retracting, transforming and not rejecting. And, finally, our movements in water show us how to transform, how to transcend--and how to avoid destruction.
Ambreen Ishrat