BY AHSAN BUTT
Zayna drifts somewhere between Jeffeh and Miraaz. It’s taken hours to lose sight of Jeffeh, its mess of golden veins and arteries vivid in her rearview, then hazy, then gone.
Read MoreThe Installation
Ahsan Butt
On Grand Tour
Ahsan & Aatif
I think I apply that sometimes to the Muslim-American thing where I think I felt—and maybe it’s because identity is formed through certain…I never went to any sort of Pakistani cultural whatever when I was growing up, but I did go to Islamic school every, well, most, Sundays throughout the year, and so there was this mechanism through which that side of my identity was formed.
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Hasanthika & Ahsan
Do I consider myself desi? Absolutely. Do I consider myself a desi writer? The context matters. If my writing appears in a white context, then I have no qualms regarding myself as a desi writer, a Muslim writer. Whether or not the white writers regard their whiteness as being a thing, I’m happy to claim desi as an identity. In the context of an all-desi issue—it gets more complicated.
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