Dear Fellow Warrior,
The featured painting, called “Prisoner of Conscience,” connects to my poem (Prisoner of Conscience: An Ode to Solitude) that I wrote earlier this year and recently published in The Memoirist on Medium.
The painting is actually also inspired by the original feature photo I chose for that poem. I’ve always preferred using my own artwork or photography on indie platforms. I really like this piece… it is simple, and it says a lot. It feels like a perfect visual companion to that poem.
I painted it over a coronavirus piece I created in 2020… Slowly, one by one, I’ve been painting over those 11 pandemic-era works, though they’ll still be featured on my blog. I don’t think I made a black and white piece before. I was fighting the urge to add another color. I’m glad it worked.
What’s interesting is that I recently came across a short story I wrote in my high school Creative Writing class… also entitled “Prisoner of Conscience.” I just rediscovered it in my Memory Book project from that class the other day, which I happened to take with me when I moved back to DC after my defense in WI.
I think that story may have indirectly inspired the one I told at the American Pakistan Foundation virtual storytelling event in 2022:
Here is the YouTube Video of me sharing that story three years ago:
I did not read the high school story at all since I wrote it…until now… and honestly, it’s not bad for a 17-year-old. I got an A on that assignment and in the class. That year, I was President of Amnesty International at my school, so the story was inspired by the activism and what I was learning. “Prisoner of Conscience” is a term I learned through Amnesty… it refers to political prisoners, activists jailed for their beliefs that speak against their governments.
In my story, the main character is a political prisoner who endures tragedy and torture for 13 years before escaping with the help of a new prison guard.
What’s funny is that the characters have Indian names I learned from watching Bollywood movies, including some named after superstars…
ShahRukh Khan is actually the name of the guard who helps the prisoner escape. LOL. What’s crazy is that I made Bollywood references again in the pandemic story in 2022.. not even realizing how it connected to something I wrote from more than 23 years ago!
And the poem I wrote this year came out quite naturally... I’m currently making a few edits and will soon replace the image with this painting.
I couldn’t fully articulate it back then and these past few years, but maybe I’ve felt like a political prisoner myself in some minor way… vilified and alienated for holding beliefs that challenge the mainstream, different from my professional circles, especially in DC.
Perhaps that’s part of what led to my own experience of imprisonment… solitude… alienation… as described in the poem.
As a human rights activist in high school, I remember thinking that by 37, I’d probably be imprisoned somewhere, maybe in Sudan. Lol. That was always my reference point. But, interestingly, I graduated with a PhD precisely at that age.. 37… and found myself in a different kind of “prison.”
I once believed we lived in a democratic society that welcomed diverse political opinions… but in reality, I learned the hard way that it does not extend to those who step outside the values of the two dominant parties in our government…
I remember in my last job in DC, a fellow progressive would “shush” me anytime I would even say the name “Bernie Sanders,” even if we were working after hours. It’s truly a pity that you could potentially face social and even professional retributions among Democrats for holding different opinions, including marginalization.
I feel I did.
I don’t think that Democracy exists under neoliberalism. It never did. And you definitely feel it, especially if you are different and outspoken, not just in politics but naturally in other dimensions, which is why neoliberal institutions had failed in their performative, tokenistic DEI policies.
Among liberals, Democrats can speak against Trump without facing social retributions. But when Progressives critique the Democratic Party, many liberals will totally end contact with you. Over a difference of opinion!
From my understanding, this is not only professional marginalization and ideological exclusion, but also political discrimination. I don’t think Dems understand how problematic this truly is, even if it is subtle and passive, especially when politics are deeply interconnected with our identity factors, for marginalized folks.
I didn’t expect to return to this title after all these years… but somehow, it all came back together in this painting, poem, and stories.
It symbolizes the challenges of these past five years for me personally… from the isolating grind of PhD life, to the despair and loneliness of the pandemic quarantine life in a more divisive political climate, the neoliberal failures of DEI in the workplace especially post-pandemic, and the unbearable grief of watching the Gaza Holocaust livestreamed on our phones, leading to further isolation with the trauma, activism, and shock from the deafening silence of the world.
All of this can contribute to making you feel so alone, alienated, isolated from the world, and ultimately a prisoner in your own mind in some way. Sometimes those mental chains are the hardest to rip off…
The pieces are perhaps one way of attempting to… maybe not close that chapter, since it’s still going, but to try to emerge from it… and honor the struggle… accept that it was God’s will… rather than drown in shame and regret over time lost in misery… while in transition.
And maybe this is my way of allowing myself to step out of that “in-between” space… and into a new chapter that will be beginning soon, inshallah… If that is God’s plan.
That story itself ends with the prisoner escaping from prison… as noted in the image below, beginning a new life. So maybe that can be me, too…
In Solidarity, Peace, Warmth, and Blessings,
Your Sister, Dr. Elsa, Warrior KQueen
“She wasn’t looking for a Knight. She was looking for a Sword.” – Atticus
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Thank you for reading and engaging!
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