I woke up from a nap on Friday afternoon to the sound of my roommates moving around our apartment, and like most millennials, instinctively, I rolled over and grabbed my phone to check what time it was. The late hour, I expected to see, given my rather problematic tendency to sleep in much later and much more than is socially acceptable after Fajr during Ramadan - but instead of seeing the photo of me and my best friend that I've become accustomed to on my lock screen, I saw a flurry of texts from friends and family, all asking if I was okay, if I had heard anything about our family, if I had any news about Dhaka.
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, a country the size of my home state of Wisconsin but which, due in large part to the fact that most of my family still lives there, has always felt like my home, had turned in the span of one afternoon from a hustling and bustling site of fond memories to a site of unspeakable grief.
Bangladesh has been unstable for a long time, it's true. While it's far from the "failed state" narrative being pushed by CNN (after all, as Aishwarya Rai's character in Bride in Prejudice reminds us, where was the United States just 60 years after its independence? "All killing each other slavery, and blindly searching for gold), the internal political corruption and instability that has plagued the country since its initial dramatic birth has continued to haunt it, especially in the past three years as fixed elections, rewritten constitutions, and banned political parties have led to explosive protests and a sharp rise in the presence of extremists.
But the circumstances don't make it any easier to wrap my mind around the fact that on Islam's holiest day of the week in Islam's holiest month of the year, 6-8 gunmen armed with explosives and holding more than 30 hostages killed 20 of them and 2 police officers, in a bakery frequented by friends I love, in a country that is my second home - a Muslim-majority country.
Though the majority of the victims were foreign nationals, through targeting Bangladesh and Turkey in the past week, once again, ISIS, who has claimed responsibility for the attacks, has proved - the majority of its victims are Muslims themselves.
I am scared for my family, grieving, tired of being sad, tired of feeling like I need to issue condemnations, tired of having to justify that Islam is a religion of peace, Islam is a religion of peace, Islam is a religion of peace. It's beyond the point of frustrating to have my and others' words drowned out only to see that the sound waves of terrorism and false spirituality are so loud.
And under it all, there is anger. Bangladesh may be getting slightly more attention because of the death of foreigners, but the outcry is still minuscule compared to Paris, despite the eerie similarities of the hostage situation. Yet where are my Facebook filters with the flag of Bangladesh, or Turkey, or Lebanon, or Yemen, or Iraq, or Syria, for that matter? Why is my grief for a brown body or a body in a country that lacks the same stability as the "developed" world any less valid? Why is frequency of attack in a region seen as justification for Western desensitization to the value of life? The reactions to tragedy after tragedy after tragedy - from the terrorist attack is the constant assault on Black lives in America to the terrorist attack targeting Latinx LGBTQ+ lives in Orlando to the terrorist attack in Bangladesh has reminded me over and over again that our lives do not count the same regardless of the color of our skin or the god that we worship in life, and we continue to seek equality even in death. Nation-states may be a construct of humanity, but the influence of the false hierarchies they create is still incredibly real.
And so my bar has been lowered. Before, I might have said: If you are grieving for Bangladesh - or any of the wounds in the world we've seen recently, especially those which have been under-covered - or you simply wish to help in some small way, send your thoughts and send your prayers, but more importantly, stem the tide of hate here at home by sitting down and having actual, productive conversations about the realities of Islam with actual Muslims. Don't feed into the electoral propaganda about "hibijabies." Refuse to accept the rhetoric about some war between Islam and the West - rhetoric that is fueling these attacks.
But the ability to push for those action items are lost in my fear and recognition of my privilege: If I died today, would my life only matter because of my American ties and roots? If I were just another brown body in another country, would I even be counted?
So I only ask that you open your eyes. Can you see me?