The Great Loss of the Twentieth Century

By Joe Kadi

The Great Loss overflows with laughter, tears, struggle, and connection. Joe Kadi’s Human and Spirit characters—activists and filmmakers, musicians and Earth lovers, survivors and the formerly homeless—grapple to make sense of the world. They find rage, healing, and unexpected help from many corners of the Cosmos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781365858918

Book preview

1.png

Praise for The Great Loss of the Twentieth Century

Joe Kadi’s linked short stories reveal the kinship between living and dead, the Lord God of Birds and Men Who Cry, and the nature of emotional terror and its aftershocks, rippling through time to create a map of medicines: the salve of friendship, a wide lake, and, throughout, queer kinship with creatures great and small.

—Zeyn Joukhadar, author of The Thirty Names of Night, and Map of Salt and Stars

With brilliance and humor, Joe Kadi tells stories about working-class and queer Arabs, about Mother Earth, healing from trauma, and a quirky universe of spirits. His words will make you laugh, cry, and ponder the world anew. This book feels to me like a new best friend.

—Eli Clare, author of Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure

These stories reach out to you from a realm where friends really do exist, a world that knows that we humans are in great need, and offer help. They ask, teach, invite insight, nourish, break your heart, and make you laugh. Each story stands on its own—but, intricately patterned, as a whole the collection sets up beautiful resonances and threads between stories and then out into broader context they reference. We need more books like this, where abuse, the ongoing attempted destruction of the earth, the violence of capitalism may be parts of our stories, parts which so many people want us to forget or ignore or pretend never happened. And we need more books like this where that’s not the end of our stories, where there are ways to go on through fire, friendship, and connecting with a world of care and community. The seen and unseen beings in these stories will lift your heart and spirit.

—Alexis Shotwell, author of Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times

The Great Loss of the Twentieth Century is a collection of stories that will first sear a hole in your heart, next make you realize that the hole was already there, and finally show you how to embrace it—on your own terms—on a path toward radical healing and love. These stories communicate the complexity of lived violence and intergenerational trauma with lyrical precision. Deftly woven together, they also uplift the beauty of—and even joy in—moving through pain, all the while celebrating the fiery spirit it takes to reclaim oneself

in the midst of it.

­—Amira Jarmakani, author of An Imperialist Love Story: Desert Romances and the War on Terror and co-editor of Sajjilu Arab American: A Reader in SWANA Studies

Joe Kadi’s The Great Loss of the 20th Century wends between the intertwined lives (and afterlives) of people navigating the large and intimate, taken for granted violences of the world we live in, and conjures with tenderness, wit and imagination a Spirit World beyond. Whether applying for an apartment after years of parental abuse and psychiatric confinement, enduring terrorist jokes and sexual violence, attempting to date post- transition or attending a deliberately interminable Training Intensive for Helping Humans in Need, the characters in Kadi’s stories stumble, puzzle through, resist, get high, fall in love, watch StarTrek, and sometimes, just sometimes, triumph against all odds. Kadi’s writing is imaginative and honest, hopeful and incisive, and just brimming with compassion, humour, and rage.

—Trish Salah, author of Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1.

© 2023 by Joe Kadi. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission—except in the case of brief quotations used in articles and reviews. For information contact the author at: www.joekadi.ca.

ISBN: 978-1-365-85891-8

Book design by Liz Kalloch

Content Note

r

I write about painful issues—which may be potential triggers or sources of distress—throughout this book. These issues include child abuse, racism, psychiatric violence, and environmental devastation. I’ve kept explicit details to a minimum, and yet specifics of violence, alongside survival and healing, thread through every story. Coming Home to Roost, Running, and The Great Loss of the Twentieth Century contain the most explicit details.

Grateful Acknowledgements

r

Writing is both a communal and a solitary endeavor. I have been blessed to receive support, friendship, and editing help from so many, and my gratitude extends to all of you:

Mother Earth, and the forces of Good in the Cosmos.

My Grandmothers.

Bronwyn, Orlando, Bunny Bast, Emma, Fury, Grace, Jake, Bembe, and Robby.

Social justice activists around the world, the common people who against so many odds, get out of bed every day and engage in the consistent small actions that heal the Earth, transform structural oppression, and create new/old ways of being. Thank you for all the love and goodness you pour into the world.

Eli Clare, my first and last reader. His brilliant imprint is etched on every page.

Friends: Therese Saliba, Scott Winn, Kim McNaughton, Amira Jarmakani, Aurora Levins Morales, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, Zeyn Joukhadar, Myke Johnson, Shelby Montgomery, Barb Wiley, Trish Salah, Nadine Naber, Marlene Jones, Amir Rabiyah, Joann Vasconcellos, Jim Fairhart. Rasha Abdulhadi, Jeff Nygaard, Marjorie Huebner, Naomi Shihab Nye, Spencer Belanger, Deb Cronin, Judith Katz, Hugh Ball. Many thanks to the folks at Mizna: Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America, as well as the congregation at Calgary’s Scarboro United Church. I also want to express my gratitude to everyone who participated in the care circle, led by AJ Komishke, that came together in the winter of 2022 when I was dealing with a health crisis.

Two key readers, who are also friends: Alexis Shotwell and Jan Binder read the manuscript at a crucial moment and offered important feedback.

Another amazing community: I work as a social justice educator in the Gender and Sexuality Studies program at University of Calgary. My students are a constant source of inspiration, insight, and positivity. I leave classes most days with a smile on my face and a warm feeling in my heart.

My colleagues/friends, in Gender and Sexuality Studies/Philosophy, are another source of positivity. Thanks to all of you.

The team that helped put this book together: Jasmine El-Hacha, Liz Kalloch, Jena Schwartz, Jean Greaves, Leila Marshy, and Rebecca Lesser.

Lastly, I want to say thank you and pay tribute to two folks, no longer with us, who inspired me deeply. They are the Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon, and Dr. Edward Said.

Dedication

r

This book is dedicated, with an abundance of love, gratitude, and affection, to:

Bronwyn Rae Kadi, companion extraordinaire, familiar, lifeline, stand-up comedienne. And unless I’m misreading her signals (which I might be!), the biggest fan of my musical expression, and,

Eli Clare, best friend extraordinaire, lifeline, fellow Mother Earth lover, the one who gets it. I could

go on . . . .

Contents

Content Note

Grateful Acknowledgements

Dedication

Coming Home to Roost: A Love Poem in Three Parts

Running

Flitting Through Her Days

Coming Home to Roost: A Love Poem in Three Parts

A Human in Need

The Film’s Dedication

The Great Loss of the Twentieth Century

Coming Home to Roost: A Love Poem in Three Parts—Part III

Final Acknowledgements

About the Author

Coming Home to Roost: A Love Poem in Three Parts

r

Part I: Arab Terrorist

Finally, she’s embracing the anger after slogging through her first three decades, a grim traveler hoping for a refund on her guided tour of the space-time continuum. She can’t resist the unbearably strong instinct to stay alive, the fierce urge to keep blood chugging through veins, oxygen pushing through lungs, receptors firing to brain.

Stay alive. The fox cornered by hounds and white men with guns claws toward survival, every time.

Oh, she tracks the healing path. Each morning she sets her mouth and takes the necessary steps. Always guided by the rippling power of Mother Earth: Lie down—in the field, the forest, the meadow, the prairie, the savannah. Let me teach you. Amira knows enough to follow these instructions. Some days the refrain is all that drags her out of bed. She carries a simple question: can life be more than struggle?

• • •

Initially, she shied away from fire. His flames almost devoured her. Now she channels the heat. Another conscious Arab whose rage and forethought create a stable bed of coals, which allow flames to roar up the centre and spill over the edges. Now she seizes the word she’s been running from. Go ahead, call me terrorist. I’m coming home to roost. Along with her compadres, Amira runs miles in disciplined fashion, practices kicks and punches, shoots at the bullseye religiously. They pray hard and think clearly. Preparation matters.

He tracked these rehearsals without worry. He waited for the expected to happen and the terrifying fury of his victims to collapse inward. But this time something new emerged, something unanticipated: a gun pointed his way; a booted foot crushing his head; a beautifully decorated Arab knife slitting his throat. Amira had forged a new path. Call me want you want. No argument here. I’m focused on my rage streaming outward. At a specific target. You, my perpetrator.

As for the internal and external shifts, Amira can’t decide whether to credit her hard work or call it a miracle. After all, miracles occasionally happen. They always take time. In this case, following the decades-long slog, following only the vaguest of premonitions to keep trying, she finally pushes her first flame into the world. The fire catches quietly and without fanfare. Satisfied with the heat source, hands streaked with soil, Amira reaches for pistol and knife, feels their heft. Suddenly she laughs. For the first time, she embraces her own name. I’m fine being a Princess under these conditions, she says to Mother Earth.

She knows how her family’s knife ended up in his hands. She arrives empty-handed the night she strolls casually into his house, past security guard, past state-of-the-art electronic warning device. When she reclaims the knife, her paw curls around it instinctively; the weight reassures. She whistles her way to the bedroom, scrutinizes his not-so-pretty body. He lies on his back, arms flung wide, legs apart, basking in the knowledge that nothing bad can ever happen. He has no internal warning device to tell him of danger; he’s never needed one. He’s always been so safe. Rhythmic breathing, a slight smile, no nightmares clutching at his heart.

There was and there was not a killing. Certainly, her charming enemy disappeared. Certainly, the rhythmic breathing, the slight smile, vanished. Certainly, his white hands, the ones that had marked her body from the day she arrived on this sweet, ill-treated planet, stopped moving.

And thus, the perpetrator dies. So odd, so unexpected. You understood the simplicity of our struggle long before I did; you knew it came down to the most basic issue—life or death. And here we are, experiencing the most unexpected of combinations.

Amira overflows with contentment.

Exactly one week ago, grief split me apart. I huddled on the kitchen floor, aching for the knife. I knew exactly where to place the knife: inner arm close to elbow, straight down to wrist. Only seven days have run by, and everything has changed. Her body’s internal timer had found a better setting than self-destruct. It had to be me or you; had to go to the death. Once I understood, everything fell into place. I’ve come home to embrace my Arab-terrorist self. I do hope you’re enjoying the fruits of your labour.

Only seven days have run by, and everything has changed. Quicker than anyone could have imagined. They buried him yesterday.

A classic obituary: One of our most beloved citizens, Bishop -----------, passed away yesterday after an unexpected heart attack. He served for 24 years at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church. Before that he was headmaster at a private boys’ school in -----------. He was involved with many civic organizations, including the Boy Scouts, the Children’s Aid Society, the Youth Hostel, and the Knights of Columbus. Many people have memories of Bishop -----------.

Yes. Boy scouts, orphans, church members—especially the young ones—do remember him. They can’t forget him, even though they’ve tried. The obituary writer told only one direct lie, about the cause of death. For the rest, he chose not to elaborate.

She revels in quiet contentment at the funeral. Only one elderly woman sees her. My dear Amira! What a pleasure to see you. What have you been doing these past years? Amira enjoys their conversation. When Mrs. Martinez admires the button pinned to her jacket, Amira pulls an extra out of her knapsack and hands over the image of that blue-green sphere of beauty with the words Love Your Mother. Mrs. Martinez’s face lights up. No one else notices the two women or the button. All those years of invisibility used to hurt, but not anymore. Amira has made invisibility into a fine art form.

I know this for certain: You will regret the day you ever messed with me. One more