23 July 2020
Dearest Fazal,
I have always felt this picture you made of a boy in Pakistan was a self-portrait. I can imagine this is you in place had your grandfather never left and your father not been born in Kenya and fallen in love with your mother in America. In fact, when I first saw this portrait without even knowing you as I understand you now, I believed this to be you and that you may have recognized yourself in this young man and he in you, that something may have passed between the viewer and the viewed.
Octavia E. Butler writes in Parable of the Sower:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
In all our conversations, both written and spoken, I don’t think we have ever discussed God, nor even mentioned the word. And yet, I believe we hold similar ideas as to what “God” might be or not be. But when I look at this photograph and see you in your own image, the unflinching eyes directly engaged, I feel as though I am touching the ineffable: seeing oneself in another and making beauty.
With love,
Terry