T H E Y O U N G N E V E R S L E E P

R AW I Y A

Age 24

DOB 12-25-1986

Brooklyn

Single

Normal sleep time 1AM

Assignment 1: Frame & photograph a meaningful ob-ject. Explain it’s significance in one sentence.

‘Season of Migration to the North’ is a semi-nal piece of post-colonial literature and speaks loudly to my complex identities as an African and an immigrant.

Assignment 3: Call an old friend/famliy member whom you haven’t communicated with in 1 year or more. Describe/transcribe the conversation.

I called my first cousin Himeda—his dad is my dad’s brother, and yet we haven’t spoken in at least three years. What follows is the transcript of our brief, painfully awkward conversation, translated from Arabic. The thought of it makes me cringe. (R signifies me, H is my cousin.)

R: Hiii, Himeda? It’s Rawiya, Elwathig’s daugh-ter?H: Rawiya! Oh wow! Hi!R: It’s been forever, totally my fault. How are you?H: No complaints, all praises due to God. I miss you, girl!R: I miss you more. How is everyone? Tuta, Aunt Wedad, Uncle Khidir?H: Everyone is great, all praises due to God. Tuta is in London these days, and Dad is stay-ing with her and Khalid. I wanted to see your dad when he was there, but I missed it.R: Ah, yes, next time, if God permits.H: And how’s your brother? Are you guys in the same city?R: Well, I’ve been in Toronto for like two months, but I live in New York now. Mohamed is good, jut working all the time. I barey even see him.H: It’s good that he likes his work, at least.R: Yeah, all praises be to God. I heard you had a baby? Congratulations a thousand times.H: Thank you! Hopefully you’ll be next.R: [laughs] Hopefully not too soon. What did you guys name her?H: Lina.R: Awww, what a nice name.H: Thank you. All she does is eat and sleep. It’s funny. You have to come see her. I’ll send you some pictures.R: I’m actually moving to London soon, if God permits, so I’ll be closer to you guys.H: Wow! Really? For what? More school?R: [laughs] No, no, I gotta find some work, God willing.H: Yes, God willing, you’ll find something. So when are you going to London then?R: Hopefully sometime in January.H: Oh, ok, good. Make sure you call me as soon as you land and I’ll come see you.

R: Yes, God willing. Well, I’ll let you go, Him-eda. Greet everyone for me.H: I will. Peace be upon you.

Assignment 4: Write your life story in one page. Omit details about your profession(s), skills & talents.

My life story began before I was born. My par-ents, two phD students with afros in Hull, Eng-land, met when they were far away from home. Some years later, I was delivered by a drunk English doctor in Khartoum, Sudan—he had been called away from a Christmas party in full swing to bring me into the world a few weeks before I was expected. Indeed, even throught my life, I’ve showed up a bit early for everything.

Since then, my life has been a series of Great Escapes. The first happened when I was four, af-ter a new Islamic government swept into power and made things difficult for my family and other Su-danese intellectuals. So my parents, older broth-er and I moved to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire to start over. I was cute, good at school, and a tomboy—you know the kind that wears a dress at the end of the movie?

My crowning achievement in life came in the sixth grade, when my friends gave me the illustrious—and very enviable—title of Best Disser. I was quick to yell out things like, “I’m stupid? May-be, but not as stupid as YOUR FACE.” Ooooh, diss.

But shit soon got real in the Ivory Coast—coup d’etats, death squads, a worsening civil war. Twelve years after fleeing Sudan, I left Côte d’Ivoire. I landed in Cairo, Egypt, where I was gutted that no one appreciated my limited Air Force 1s. Depressed, homesick, and riddled with survivor’s guilt, I moved to Tunis, Tunisia after only a semester in Cairo.

In Tunisia, during my senior year of high school, I had my heart broken for the first time. It was a glorious year, filled with all of the freedoms of my impending adulthood but none of its responsi-bilities.

When I was 17, I escaped again. This time to Toronto, where I learned how to do laundry and layer for winter weather. I got a fake i.d. and became the person I’ll be for the rest of my life. But the thing about Toronto is that it gets real small real fast.

That’s not the case in New York where, for the past 2-and-a-half years, I’ve danced on park benches, cried in stairwells and napped in coffee shops. I’ve never felt more young, dumb, fun and beautiful. So far, so good.

Assignment 5: Describe 3 of your greatest fears.

Assignment 5: Describe 3 of your greatest fears.

Is it clichéed to be afraid of DEATH? Prob-ably. But every cliché begins with a bit of truth, right? The scary thing about death—other than having no idea where you’ll end up; whether you’ll disappear entirely and become wormfood; whether or not your ideas about God or the after life were correct—is the knowledge that the world will go on without you. The sun won’t stop shin-ing just because I’m not here to see it. That, more than anything, is a reminder of how insig-nificant I am. And that’s why the thought of death scares the shit out of me.

As difficult as it is to admit, I’m afraid of being POOR. Not that I need (or expect) to be draped in furs and living like Madoff, but the thought of a meager life freaks me out. Frankly, the stress of being without financial security is one I’m not sure I can handle. It’s one thing to be a poor 20-something, when you have hopes for the future to sustain you. But living like a col-lege student in my middle age would break me. I fear my own weakness and the things I would do in the face of poverty.

I fear PARENTHOOD. Hitler had a mother. You can raise your children however you like, but at a certain point, their decisions are beyond your control. While I’m confident that I can be a good mother, that doesn’t mean my future children won’t turn out to be monsters. There’s only so much you can do as a parent, and yet you are re-sponsible for an entire human life and its conse-quences. What if I bring someone into the world who would have better been left unborn? That shit cray.

Assignment 7: Write & mail a handwritten letter to the participant who chose you.

Dear LaTricia,I hope this letter finds you well. When’s the last time you received an actual bona fide letter that wasn’t simply a ploy to ask for money? (Although if you DO want to send me some cash, that would be perfectly fine, too. Just kidding! [not re-ally.])

But in all seriousness, thank you for choosing me. I hope you had as much fun with your assign-ments as I’m having with mine. Writing this let-ter kind of reminds me of the pen pal I had in the fourth grade. I think he was a British boy somewhere in the North of England. I wonder what he’s up to and whether he remembers me. My mom always tells a story about a pen pal she had in London and whom she ended up visiting. I guess she was a better pen pal than I ever was.

What have you been up to lately? I’ve basically been bedridden for the past couple of months, after having taken a tumble and broken my ankle. I barely remember what it’s like to lead a nor-mal life—y’know, to be able to walk, ride a bike, skip a rope, etc. So, my advice to you is: don’t take your feet for granted. You’ll miss those suckers should you ever be unable to walk for an extended period of time. (I pray that never hap-pens to you, though.)

Anyway, forgive my rambling. All the best.

xoxo,Rawiya

Assignment 8: Write & mail a handwritten letter to a random particpant whom you do not know.

Hi Vek,You’ve got a pretty cool name! I wonder what it means and whether it’s short for something.

My name, Rawiya, means ‘storyteller’ in Ara-bic. People often have a hard time with it, even though it’s pronounced just like it looks: Ra-wee-ya. Still, I watch people trip over it all the time. Whenever I’m ordering coffee, or some-times at the dry cleaners, I say my name is ‘Sara’. Just to make it easier. That’s also what I say to dudes I have no interest in speaking to or seeing again.

You’d imagine with a name like ‘storyteller’, I’d have some stories to tell you. Sadly, that is not the case. There is, however, an erotic writer named Rawiya. And, as a writer myself, I often get mistaken for her on the Internet. I wonder whether prospective employers google me and then somehow arrive at her work instead? An erotic writer with my name could have cost me some jobs? Jesus Christ! I can’t believe I’ve never thought of that before.

I’ll have to report back to you if that ever hap-pens. In the meantime, I hope you’re keeping warm in the face of the impending winter.

Keep well, wherever in the world you are, and apologies if I’ve frightened you with my nonsen-sical, tangential letter. You can blame Branden.

CHEERS,Rawiya

Assignment 9: Photograph a scar. Tell it’s story.

My favorite band is Death From Above 1979. They are a punk duo from Toronto, with Jesse Keeler on bass and Sebastien Grainger on drums and vocals. The band broke up shortly after I moved to To-ronto, so I never got to see them. This past sum-mer, they announced they were reuniting to play a handful shows, one of which was the invite-only VICE.com launch party in Brooklyn, where they played along Tanlines, Rick Ross and a bunch of others. After much wrangling, I finally found a way to get into the party. Sweet.

When the band started playing, I ran towards the stage to join the mosh pit. Before I got there, I slipped on a spilled drink and went down HARD. The next day, my entire left leg was bruised and my ankle was as big as a house. Even though I couldn’t walk, I (stupidly) waited three weeks before seeing a doctor. I was rushed to an emer-gency room, where I was told I had torn a bunch of ligaments and broken my ankle in three places. I had to have surgery, wherein a metal plate and a bunch of screws were inserted into my ankle.

The show was three months ago. I still can’t walk.

The resulting scars, one on each side of my foot, make it difficult for me to listen to Death From Above anymore.

Assignment: Describe your most recent dream.

I had an awful dream last night. I dreamt an in-credibly realistic-seeming sequence of events surrounding a boy that I may or may not be see-ing. In the dream, we had gone on a wonderfully romantic date that spanned two continents and a series of best-of-my-life meals.

Upon our return, he organized a party for me at an apartment that looked very much like one I lived in in high school. The surprise was that his ex-girlfriend (whom I know in real life, so-cially) showed up with three of her goon-like girlfriends to beat me down.

They encircled me pretty menacingly. I was done for, I figured. But right before the beatdown was to begin, she burst into tears. That girl cried her eyes out and asked how I could betray her so badly. When I told her I was sorry and that I didn’t think she’d be upset, she cried even hard-er. This time, her tears began accumulating on the coffee table. They grew into a wedding cake—three tiers, positively yummy-looking.

Her goons carried the cake out of the room.

Then I woke up, determined to stop seeing the boy in question right away.

Then I woke up, determined to stop seeing the boy in question right away.