Book highlight: The Knot of My Tongue

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Zehra Naqvi was interested in exploring the loss of language in the aftermath of violence and thus decided to envision the roots of it in her debut poetry collection, The Knot of My Tongue. 

The violence Naqvi talks about is a blend of colonial, intergenerational, or historical violence that often results in “the erasure of language, or the loss of language as a result of displacement and migration.” 

Naqvi also explores how the deprivation of language can often result in a state of shock and how one finds language in these moments of silence, whether it’s through intergenerational stories, myths, storytelling, traditions, or conversations with friends and family.

While writing the book, Naqvi found language doesn’t come from the self but is often a consequence of exchange and connection to the community. 

The immigrant experience, 1947 Partition of India, myth, and theology are some of the themes that weave the threads of Naqvi’s book. 

Naqvi says the partition that resulted in the birth of two independent nation states — India and Pakistan — unleashed a legacy of migration for two generations of her family. Originally from Lucknow, India, her grandparents migrated to Karachi, Pakistan in the aftermath of partition. This was followed by her parents’ move to Vancouver, where Naqvi was brought up. This legacy of displacement, Naqvi says, has led to loss of traditions. 

Ghazals, which refers to Arabic verses often centered around love and loss, and Marsiyas, which are elegies significant in the literary tradition in Lucknow, are some poetic forms Naqvi has made use of in her work. Other poetic tools Naqvi employed are lyrical essays, prose, and narrative poems. 

Naqvi says when she initially started writing, the book was a collection of essays, memoir pieces, and poems. Struggling to find structure, Naqvi recounts thinking of water to find the right form. 

“There’s something about water where it meanders, and it’s the containers and structures that give meaning. If you think about water, where it falls into, [that’s] what gives it shape and meaning.”

The name for the poetry collection stems from a Quranic verse. The story of Moses, also known as Musa, was one Naqvi was told as a child. Born with a speech impediment, Musa often struggled to speak and was asked to go to the Pharaoh to ask for his people’s freedom, who were enslaved, on their behalf. 

“He’s scared to speak, and he feels like his body, his tongue, can’t. He’s not sure how to do this,” Naqvi says.  

“So, there’s a prayer where he asks God to ease the tightness of his chest and to remove the knot from his tongue.”

The prayer, called the Supplication of Musa, was often taught to Naqvi to give her strength when she felt scared of speaking or advocating for herself. 

Naqvi says marginalized communities are often subjected to represent and address stereotypes against them in their work. The Knot of My Tongue is her attempt to break free from this misconception as a Muslim woman. 

“I wanted to be able to talk about things that exist within the [Muslim] community without feeling that it would be manipulated or misused,” she says, adding that the process of writing the book was meaningful to her. 

“The collection itself is kind of outside of me, it’s not really mine anymore.”

The Knot of My Tongue came out in March and is available for purchase at Chapters-Indigo, Amazon, and Goodreads.