Azaan- The call to namaaz

An unfamiliar word
on a blog created
to track my academic routes, you say.
An unfamiliar word
in 'mainstream' Canadian vocabulary,
you remind me.
And I continue to decolonise,
even by refusing to spell my word with a 'z'.

I, whose sister, raised in her father's faith
Was unable to travel freely in the city of her birth
and now the frowns at hijabs and nikaabs, and beautiful souls
labelled "the other"
by the ignorant

the danger of single-story worldviews
is creeping up on many
and the flight continues
as children continue to be raised with their own
and others are asked to transer schools to be with their kind

and I push
and push
with many
one stone at a time
to reduce to rubble, that un-knowledge
that we are all dust, together
sooner or later.

Regan, P. (2012). Unsettling the settler within. (1 ed.). Vancouver: UBC Press