I use their MiniCards to promote ShootCake, my food photography sideline. The MiniCards are really bitty and supercute in that way all diminutive things are. When they were going to be included in the goody-bags at an event I was photographing, I realised their lilliputian dimensions would also be their disadvantage in the mash of larger business cards, tissue paper, and samples.

A card-holder seemed like the best presentation solution and I came up with a concept that referenced my work and allowed for the card itself to be showcased.

They’re easy to knock together if you have a cutting machine and the design software that talks to it. I altered a camera-shaped dingbat to fit the dimensions of the card, mirrored it to create a flip-open mechanism and inserted a vertical cut for the card to slot through.

I’ve been fielding a few queries to go commercial with these but my minions are as lazy as I am. If you have access to a Silhouette Cameo, I’ve made the cutting file available for you to download here*. The file allows for six card holders to be cut out of one standard 12×12 scrapbook paper sheet.

*
Camera-shaped MiniCard Holder by Saaleha Bamjee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

While the spells did little to vanquish the spectres that loom around an unrequited adolescent, the poems I wrote were innocent incantations wrapped up in secrets; taweez to pacify and protect.

I soon outgrew traditional rhyme schemata and found more space in free verse and bastard lines. That’s still the kind of place I like stretching out in and I’ve decided to focus on poetry for my Creative Writing MA.

How terrifically self-indulgent it is to tell people that I’m going to spend an entire year writing poems and reading them!

Between poetry and prose, I can’t say which is the easier to write. Both demand something different from the writer. I’d like to be versatile enough to be slave to both, but for now, I feel (and that’s the key to it really, the feeling) that poetry will be transformative. I may just find my voice.

There are no side-kicks here.
We save this world together.

–

Without you,

it was another lifetime.

With you

is all of this life,

all of this time.

–

It was not the evisceration I expected but a valuable series of inputs and comments on the way we structured and conveyed meaning through our work.

I’ve been looking for this grade of sand-paper all my life.

Here are the last in my series of photos taken in and around the Rhodes University campus:

We spent most of Tuesday on a farm belonging to Robert Berold, one of the course supervisors. It is a generous space and when we weren’t being embraced by the heartening hospitality of our hosts, we filled our time sitting under the trees free-writing.

We left the farm early enough for me to still have a bit of time to walk through Grahamstown and take a few close-up pictures of the Cathedral.

There’s also a metal sculpture on campus that makes me feel like an unbound traveller, cycling into the Anywhere.

Day 3:

It was our first full day of readings and seminars, and as per my twitter/facebook updates, I couldn’t help but fizz with fangirl-adulation.

In this “The City of Saints”, the most interesting buildings to photograph often happen to be religious structures. The following pictures are of the Rhodes University Chapel of St Mary and All the Angels.

Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) on St Peters Campus, Rhodes University, and home of the MA Creative Writing programme.

When the Grahamstown gaol closed in 1975, it had been the oldest functioning prison in the Republic of South Africa.

Down High Street, towards the St. Michael and St. George Cathedral.

You can rewrite your script at any time but there’s just something about new years and Mondays that import impetus and gravitas to reinventions.

I have just a few resolutions this year;

• To drop the kilogram-equivalent of a small child.
• To respect food.
• To focus on writing and photography.
• To start my day earlier.

I’ve been accepted into Rhodes University’s part-time MA Creative Writing programme. Over the next two years I will have flare guns directed at my reluctant-writer ass by course deadlines and supervisors.

While I’ve always considered my greatest strength to be the ability to fit into whatever skin is demanded of me, my scattered focus has been to my detriment.

My energies have been stretched across too many frames. I’ve not been writing as I should and I am bereft.

I’ve decided to downscale my freelance work to include only existing copywriting/web management obligations, the ShootCake project and the occasional social media workshop facilitation I do for frayintermedia.

I know this MA will only be as good as the hard work I put into it, but it does offer me a tangible creative process and an end in sight.

I’m hopeful.
 

As a regular, non-violent, level-headed Muslim, it’s tiresome having to apologise all the time.

So, here follows my blanket apology. There will be none thereafter, ever again.

I apologise for terrorism, for violence against women and children, for halaal restaurants that don’t serve alcohol, for child-marriages, for women wearing black cloaks, for women covering their hair and faces, for women not being allowed to drive, for death by adultery, for not eating Christmas gammon, for closing our stores during Friday prayer, for carrying water bottles into public toilet stalls so we can wash ourselves after we’ve done our business, for halaal stamps on toothpick boxes, for bad breath during Ramadaan, for being boring at office parties, for praying so goddamn often, for crazy preachers obsessed with vegetables and vaginas.

If I’ve left anything out, I apologise for that too.

After hitting Send, I felt incredibly selfish. As one respondent wrote, it was, indeed, a rant.

This woman was speaking from a place of pain, anger and betrayal. She’d been brutalised by men who used Islam to grind her into nothing.

I was speaking from a place of anger and annoyance. My faith had been maligned and I was tired of feeling like I had to defend it whenever a Muslim commits an atrocity.

But a Muslim had committed an atrocity.

And I’m reminded of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his teachings to command good and forbid evil.

Growing up Muslim in a pluralistic country, it’s easier for us to see where culture and faith mesh or collide.

Had I been born in India, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, would the lines be clear?

Therefore there is one more apology in order.

I apologise to those women who’ve had their lives bludgeoned by men who use their religion as a club to subdue and dispirit them, who’ve been subjected to brutality and horror and who are in dire need of our compassion and voices.

–

I wrote this poem after watching The Stoning of Soraya M.

Spotted at the paint section of Builder’s Warehouse, Glen Eagles.

“Paint my faith,

You should paint my faith.

It’s the picture of a thousand cheesecloths”

(Apologies to Michael Learns To Rock)

Muslin/Muslim typos amuse me.

I often wonder who’s more unfortunate; the muslim having the paneer strained through them or the person who has to eat it after.

There have been more pictures than words of late, and I’d have turned this entire space into a photo blog yonks ago if it didn’t mean I would be giving my procrastination djinn the rope to strangle my muse.  But for now, while Table Mountain mellows and irons out my thinking, pictures will have to make do.

Looking towards Cape Town from Milnerton beach

Cape Town Stadium about to be hailed back to its mothership

The Turkish bulk carrier Seli 1 ran aground on Table View beach in September, 2009

Click here to read my 2006 Capsule Cape Town account.

In-between the googolplex in lottery wins, monster erection guarantees, bank phish and the miscellany of bot-generated indictments on human desire and greed, it was with great delight that I came across this gem;

dear importer

Have a nice day !
Lately we have a nice nite water pen , Kpen-050 and i suggest to you at the first time . Please kindly check the below details .

While in Tangier, we stayed at Dar23; a guest-house with a rooftop terrace that overlooked the port.

I will always associate a part of our time there with the scent of cooking fish and laundry baking off in the sun.

This design is my abstraction of the view from the guest-house’s terrace.

Click on the image to open the wallpaper to its full resolution of 1024×768, then right-click on the image to save.

I used to live in a commune not far from where we were shooting.

Krause street and De la Rey were part of my daily commute and even though I was taken by the decaying facades admired through anti-smash&grab car-window tinting, I just didn’t gather enough fortitude at the time to see these structures up close.

But there’s always guts in numbers.

The four of us started off at the 23rd Street mosque, walked down towards the De la Rey street subway linking Pageview to Fordsburg and ended at the in desuetude Jajbhay Memorial school.

The De la Rey street subway mural is a recent installation and tells the story of a community who were uprooted yet who also celebrated, worshiped and hoped for a time when the spectre of Apartheid would shrink away.

De la Rey street subway mural

De la Rey street subway mural

De la Rey street subway mural

23rd Street Mosque, Fietas

Click here to see the full set of photographs on Flickr.

What does one do?

except to

Thank God

for everyday

with a man

who fits the floor with wearied socks and jeans,
whose mouth will never tune to mushrooms or fennel,
who constantly points out, in a maddeningly accurate fashion, that I procrastinate,
who nags and nags and nags me to write The Book,
who tsks tsks at my cussing,
who forgets to put the milk away.

He should’ve been in school all those times he ran up the stairs to ask if we needed washing or ironing done.

Did Mahmood ever sleep? Late nights, early mornings, there’s Mahmood running up those stairs and that, delivering and collecting laundry.

Teachers, if he had any, would’ve probably written him in as a pleasant child on an end-of-year report. He had one of those smiles often described as quick and easy, and an arm that readily extended for a respectful handshake.

I wonder what Mahmood is doing today.

–

I wish I could remember the name of that taxi driver we flagged down on two separate occasions.

What are the chances, in a city of many millions, that we’d meet the same soul for a second round?

The first time was outside the train station. His taxi was stock-standard Cairo-battered, held together by the Will of Allah. His fare was fair for the distance so we jumped right in. He was a wired chap; lots of energy coursing through him, manifesting as odd twitches and classic ants-in-pants syndrome as he wiped down his dashboard while navigating the streets. He asked us if it would be okay for him to stop the cab so he could clean it. We were in no hurry and perhaps we were a little charmed by his brand of crazy. He ran a rag over half his taxi, got back in and drove us to Madinat Nasr. His taxi broke down just as he dropped us off outside Wonderland. He was the kind of person you remembered easily in prayer.

A few weeks later, we flagged down a taxi in Heliopolis. It was one of those new black and white metered ones, a Chevrolet with plastic still on the seats. And the same driver from the train station. He recognised us; the odd agnabee couple with broken Arabic tongues. His energy levels notched all the way to the top. He made a good show of setting the meter to zero before he pulled off. He offered us sweets while searching for a CD. He popped it in and set the volume up. It was Sean Paul. I didn’t have the heart to say that I really preferred Umm Kulthum. We were his guests and he played a wonderful host. Our hearts soared at the upgrading of his taxi, at his deserving good fortune. In that moment I asked God to always accept this man’s prayers. Never had I wanted more for a total stranger.

I wonder if he is in Tahrir Square today.

It must have been exceptionally difficult for our independent readers; Hamish Pillay and Shubnum Khan (both writers, much-loved and lauded) to score the entries.

As our circle tends to draw close and tight, it was important for no names to be attached to any of the submissions. The resulting scores were based purely on technical skill and an imaginative interpretation of the brief.

Entry #2 bagged the  overall top score; Mohammed Irfaan Imamdin‘s telling of impulsive rebellion.

Honourable  mentions include; Farzanah Adam, Mohammed Chohan (see his noteworthy graphic below), Waseem Dawood, Shameema Dharsey, Asif Firfirey and Aasia Fredericks.

All the entries will be compiled into a pdf for download.

“She constructed interesting and meaningful sentences.”

–

(Winners of the pac-man moleskine giveaway will be announced after January 24th.)

Force formulating/following resolutions into a more tangible and active space.

Just roll the dice each day and do.

1. Journal
2. Pick up the phone
3. Write 1000 words
4. Sweat
5. Get off of the internet
6. Follow a recipe
7. Check something off of the list
8. Learn two new words (one Arabic and one English)
9. Follow a design tutorial
10. Give something away
11. Remember God outside of ritual
12. Brainstorm and map the next big idea

Download the template here (sign-up required).