Who Cares for the Caged Bird?
From the Outside
Chapter 9
I wanted this work to give me relief from a great burden, that which I could not possibly encapsulate in only a few words. When my family members were first incarcerated in the UAE, I felt like I had lost everything. Not only had I finally completely lost my mother, my once dearest companion in our shared journey of growing up and growing old, but I had also lost the simple joys of my life. Like forgetting to call home because I was so immersed in the mundanity of my everyday, or feeling free and unfettered, at rest. Instead, I awoke daily to a renewed sense of fear that only seemed to grow stronger and stronger every morning–that is, when I could sleep. On nights that I could not, I would feel this fear snake around my insides, slithering its way through me, swelling within a pit it had carved out of my chest as I remained awake in the dark. It had inhabited me.
It still does. As I listened to the stories the women we spoke with shared, I expected to feel a likeness, something that would cross our hearts in a bond unspoken. It was an expectation founded on my idealism, not in truth. Because in reality, I felt more isolated than ever before. It is difficult to connect, to organize in the political vacuum of the UAE. There is no politic as such in the desert country. Most of us who venture here treat it as a lottery; we migrate for the golden ticket of upward social mobility and hope we can make it, leaving just in time so our families do not forget our names. These women wanted to forget everything and move on; there was nothing to organize around. Therefore, it seemed we were, and still are, lonely planets–with no stars, moons, or suns for company. We revolve around our own axes, solitary, and perchance we face one another in our solitary revolutions. I like metaphors because I can hide behind them.
Even in feminist circles, I am alone. There are many feminists today who continue to believe prison is the answer. If they could simply throw all the rapists, drug addicts, war criminals, and white collar lawbreakers–all the crooks, culprits, and cheats–into some cage on the outskirts of town, they seem to believe we would all be fantastically safe and empowered. It has somehow become inappropriate to affirm that nobody deserves to be imprisoned, not even the hardened, vicious brutes who commit the most heinous of harms. The prison is not, and has never been, a rehabilitation center. When I proclaim: I am an abolitionist, I proclaim: no one must be caged. I proclaim: every prisoner is a political prisoner. I proclaim this because I am aware of the politics of crime, of rape, of theft.
The truth is, I am in The Outside. The Outside is a place beyond the prison, but in its close proximity. It is the prison’s gentrified sister neighborhood. It is not freedom in its real sense. Freedom is believed to be another universe away, where those untainted by the stigma of prison move as if the prison is not central to their surveilled actions. You can play pretend in the world of freedom, as if the prison is far removed from your lived experience. However, you navigate a carceral world just as I do. You walk on the “right side” of the road, you pay the police officer a bribe, you take your chances with the manufactured idea of crime when you know your privilege can protect you.
When I proclaim: I am an abolitionist,
I proclaim: no one must be caged.
I proclaim: every prisoner is a political prisoner.
I proclaim this because I am aware of the politics of crime, of rape, of theft.
My care work has now transitioned into my political work, my community work. My politics is my care. I care for those (who might be) imprisoned as I had once cared for my imprisoned mother, as my grandmother cared for my mutacha. My care is my politics. I invite you to care with me, to imagine a world truly beyond the carceral.
A stairway to nowhere.
We must first and foremost thank the women who agreed to speak with us so candidly about their lives. We were welcomed into their homes with a sense of transparency and warmth (and of course with delicious tea, coffee, and homemade snacks). We carry our conversations—punctuated by husbands and children, phone calls and whistling pressure cookers—everywhere, remembering each and every caregiver with a quiet love and gratitude at all hours. We are impossibly grateful for their time and thoughts, dark jokes and laughter, unabashed tears and heartache.
Secondly, we could not express our gratitude for Team reFrame enough. This project was delayed on more than one occasion owing to professional and personal challenges, but the team persisted to bring our vision to life. While stories about incarceration are often stigmatized and churned out from a specific kind of gaze, Team reFrame never confined us to the carceral world we wished so desperately to escape from.
And thirdly, thank you to Pavithra Ramanujam and Sutirtha Chatterjee for seeing this project through. It would not have been possible without your creative vision and execution. Our special thanks to Arun Abraham, Gurpreet Kaur, Manasa S., Neha Jain, Shiyona Ann Gijo, Sudeshna Saha Roy, and Zubayr Hossain.
Our final note of thanks is for all the abolitionists who have come before us. Thank you for the courage to commit jailbreak of the imagination (Kaba, 2021), the poetry we sing through it.
Thanks and Gratitude
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