i only know the kind of love that has messy hands

There is something beautiful about intentionally getting your hands messy. I walk past the cooking oil aisle at Walmart; coconut oil belongs in a mitti ka bartan being heated up as I ritually find my place between my mother’s crouched knees that crack when she prays. She works it into my scalp; I learn to bear the heat and think about years of her hands roasting rotis over the open gas fire. I ask my mother to tell me the story of how my father proposed to her again and listen closely. I tend to forget that she was a girl once with pigtails and a mother that she couldn’t imagine living without who oiled her hair every Friday before the men walked back home from the mosque. I forget that in some life, we are both girls that haven’t had to leave the familiarity of their homes to go somewhere strange and new. Girls who fight their siblings for the TV remote and both girls who couldn’t imagine what it’s like to have tired fingers massaging tiger balm onto the backs of their sons’ necks and letting its musty smell sink into our clothes. People here are afraid to get their hands messy, ma. Sword-like forks guarding against the butter chicken as if it smeared in all its turmeric-ness, they might learn too much of what it’s like to love selflessly. My vegetarian grandmother cooked fish curry and scooped it into pieces of roti she tore with her hands to feed my grandfather the day before he died. I apply acne cream on this new pimple my little brother has on his forehead and tell him not to touch it. My cousin scrubs dry henna off my hands the night before her wedding, her nails tinting red before the bits find their way into the sink. I knead my father’s feet with honey lotion before he goes to bed and ask him to stop mumbling that he loves me. I think I might miss hearing that some day. But right now I blame myself for the cracked heels he has from those awfully uncomfortable shoes he wears to work. I suppose loving is duty.

Artist Statement

Last term, I found myself thinking a lot about the distinct ways in which people back home express love, and the kind of expression of love that I grew up with being rooted almost entirely in selflessness and acts of service. In thinking about this, I drew parallels with the space in which I exist now - where love is expressed in an entirely different, and yet almost hesitant way. 'I only know the kind of love that has messy hands' explores my longing for the expression of love that I know so well -- embedded in acts of duty. 

Nawal Aziz

---from Karachi, Pakistan and currently a senior studying Political Science at Bennington College. Misses her family and loves chai!