Circus

I was told to put my hand into a box containing ten snakes because I’m a Muslim woman and I believe in اللّٰه and His Messenger ﷺ, because one of the snakes is actually non-venomous, and because every believer does this challenge in this circus and they’re all fine. I refused the challenge and walked away from the circus. I was boo-ed by the spectators, even those from the same seating section I came from; they said that, if I truly trusted Ar-Rahman, I should’ve been grateful for even being considered to participate in the challenge after having lived and waited in my seat since the moment of my birth.

Now, not only do I avoid the circus, I detest it. People call me a kafir.

After a while, I noticed many women with wounded hands, full of scars, battered and mangled; some of them were still bleeding from fresh wounds. Clearly not fine.

Many women came up with different solutions to the challenge. Many others abandoned the challenge altogether; watching the challenge from the spectator seats was enough. Some decided to share the list of snakes that women should avoid and the list of requirements for women before letting their hands be dragged into that box again. Some challenged the circus directors head on

Some began to question why the circus and the challenge even exist and have been normalised for centuries. Some were told to keep quiet. Some were called apostates for questioning the circus and the challenge. Some were killed to preserve the honour of the circus directors.

Perhaps the worst thing I’ve learned is that many of the snake caretakers and general circus staff operate and navigate around the circus without their hands, for theirs had already been fed to the snakes, and they had been trained to have an unwavering conviction that they would become circus directors in the future. Their lives were set, they said. That’s the natural career path of snake caretakers and all other circus staff. The cheers from the spectators are enough for them; they mean they’re performing well.

I feel sick. Now it makes sense that I was kicked around the circus I didn’t even want to be in; it was because most of the circus staff were without hands.

One spectator who dabbles as a veterinarian in the circus, with both hands still intact and healthy, one day told other spectators of the circus to stop generalising the circus staff just because I and many others said we were kicked around by the handless circus staff.

I throw rocks at all spectators and circus staff indiscriminately whenever I have to go through a circus before I can reach my actual destination, and suddenly I’m “evil”. Suddenly, my throwing rocks is the act people recognise as violence before they even begin to hope to understand what it is about this circus that sounds so familiar to them. Suddenly, my throwing rocks is the one act people find urgent enough to criticise with a Qur’anic verse, after everything else that happened in that circus apparently failed to inspire the same religious concern.

Many members of the circus staff hate me for that; some even said women like me are not Muslims. But that’s okay. Everyone knows the circus is not the whole world; there are other places beyond it. For some, the circus is the default lens through which they experience the whole world. Women know which path leads to the masjid regardless.

At the end of the day, there should be nobody above us but اللّٰه; nobody below us but the soil that will claim our bodies when the time comes. No circus in between.