ROUKIA ALI’S “SING, SO I MAY LOVE YOU”

Your parents’ vow renewal ceremony was meant to be the end of anticipation—you’d been hurried by your crooning relatives regaling you with stories about the rarity of your father’s singing. You’d been teased before—the same empty treasure chest memory of his minute humming driving you to school, jaunting and rippling like stones skipping across a lake, drowning unexpectedly in radio static.

You know he’s not shy, so you figure that maybe you need to abandon the caricature of your father you drew up in your mind that proved that—the belligerent, headstrong bull who picked fights with you for being his curt and sarcastic lookalike. A man with a razor-bladed tongue of biting remarks befitting the harsh lines of his serious features. But you can’t imagine anything different with every time he chooses to hide from you: any musical notes he conjures must be razed to their brittlest bits, devoured in growls.

You’re sixteen, reading a book at the kitchen table while he washes the rice for dinner. The trickling water shivers through the room, the rice rasping at the bottom of the cooking pot—then, a confession, a baritone buzz. Surprise seizes you at the clear and quiet singing of a song that you know, whispered to you as a toddler. His voice trickles sweet like wine, ageing backwards like a record replayed for the best part—the “have a good day” chimes as you sling open the car door. His arms jokingly jerking you through a dance after the ceremony, staving off your disappointment and giggling, half-hearted resistance by continually insisting that he only dances, never sings.

He glances over, catching you cataloguing him through a thin film of tears. Before he peters into silence, before you lose him, you hum back. There will be no hiding anymore.

by Roukia Ali

ROUKIA ALI’S “SPELLING ME”

*Reader*

During the interview that landed me my dream job as a magazine staff writer with the university’s on-campus publication, I was asked if there was a specific moment or writer that made me want to be an author. My reply was that reading books that made me feel seen as a child made me want to grow up contributing to that canon. In a literary world that consistently reminded me I was a minority, reading books like "Dork Diaries", written by a Black woman, or "Thea Sisters" and identifying with Pamela amidst that diverse cast of characters gave me hope in reclaiming pride in my identity. I have always believed that reading informs writing because it’s a practice in empathy—connecting with so many different perspectives and reaching people of all backgrounds with my own work is something that wouldn’t have been possible if I grew up without reading books that proved I could be seen and that I could succeed.

*Overthinker*

Six years after it happened, I told my father I was going to write about his heart attack for my first-year introductory creative writing course, and he told me to do that, I needed to be ready to die. At eleven years old, death came close and pressed upon me like a warm hand, urging me to believe in it as I spent afternoons wiping tears away to focus on my father’s breathing yet unfamiliar shape sleeping in the hospital bed. Though he recovered courageously, I always felt I hadn’t matured past that age—I contemplate in the dark sometimes about any time in my life where I felt ready to go, and I come up empty—it’s the joke you breathe into the air, “I could die happy!”; it dissolves as if it never was. 

I still wrote the story, but it made me realise that I wouldn’t be able to die until I had cherished everyone I possibly could, to the point where death could do nothing to erase them from my mind.

*Ugly*

I was the only black girl in my grade at my elementary school until the sixth grade. I didn’t remember thinking less of myself for it until I was conditioned to. It became a process of implicit secrecy—waiting during the birthday sleepovers at my white friends’ houses until the parents went upstairs and darkness sagged into the cool basement air to slip the bonnet over my head. Eating my lunch in the back of the class like that would disguise the smell. In sixth grade, my best friend came—natural hair out, Afrobeats on blast. 

We’re late on the way to a friend’s house for an afternoon hangout, belting along to Aya Nakamura on the aux, and we reclaim the stereotypes in between the lyrics—Black people are fashionably, laughably late—yet we’re teenagers like anyone else. Shame whirls out the open windows.

*Kia*

The burden of being named after the grandmother I never met is still something I contend with, so in grappling with her legacies, I halved them and manifested my own. There is an intimacy in introducing her first, and then this version of myself I’m growing into, which I hope honours her. When I revisited Alberta during the first winter break since moving to Toronto for university, “Kia” carved out a space for me in the town I thought I outgrew.

“Kia!” My friends scream as I tackle them in the rec center, brushing my face across countless necks and cheeks, my laugh high and squealing like my sneakers against the linoleum floors. Kia, you’re home.

*Introvert*

Years spent huddled in libraries, writing in solitude, and sitting with watching eyes at family gatherings have left me “quiet”, as people say, whereas I prefer “observant”. I took this same reputation to school, so it came as a surprise to everyone when I was elected to read self-written poetry at my high school graduation, in front of thousands. There’s a confidence in sharing my work, knowing that it’s the realest part of me, that bleeds into my social capabilities after readings—I’m not battling anxiety talking to people because I’ve already presented everything they need to know about me through my words. They’re the best conversations because there’s no small talk—I don’t have to sit and watch and linger in silence because something I said impacted someone enough that they want me actively participating in the conversation. It’s the only recognition I crave more than any award.

*Ambitious*

My mother says I can never be happy because I am an obsessive comparer—I have jealous eyes paired with a congratulatory voice that tries to be happy for other people without gouging my own eyes out. I don’t dislike being called ambitious—I bite back that it only means sooner or later, I’ll get what I want. But what do I want? is often the question when the high of victory subsides like a slow, rolling wave collapsing at the shoreline.

At my first creative nonfiction showcase, after reading my personal essay, I was asking my friend from the other section of the same course who did not read for the showcase what would have convinced her to. I was expecting a typical answer like “if I wrote something I was particularly proud of” or “if I had practised a specific piece more.”

“If what I wrote was something I thought could inspire someone else,” she said, and then smiled at me. “I really liked your piece for that reason.”

Ah, I realised, hugging my piece to my chest—the one I read in the hopes of getting more confident at reading—she had helped me, receiving it so well. There it is.

by Roukia Ali