The Taqwacores Motion Picture World Premeire
As the lights dimmed down for the world premiere of The Taqwacores, there was a uproar of cheers and clapping. My heart flip flopped like mad. I was sitting between Marwan of Al-Thawra and Imran of The Kominas. But beyond them, I was surrounded by The Taqwacores family. Mike Knight was down the row, Ian Tran who plays Fasiq was right in front, Omar Fadel who did the scoring for the film was down the way, and Jaime from Alternative Tentacles was sitting on the other side of Marwan. Everyone had luckily gotten in, despite concerns that not everyone would be able to.
As I watched the opening sequence, I was stunned silent. The Kominas song Shahria law opened up the movie, and taqwacore images of posters, graffiti, and signs flashed across the screen. On the big screen names scrolled by in the credits that I had slowly accepted as Taqwacore friends and family.
For the next two hours I followed the story of Yusef in his punk rock adventure in the Taqwacore house in upstate New York. The story I was familiar with but seeing it on the big screen refreshed it anew. The movie was in Sundance’s NEXT category of low budget films, a DIY punk move if I’d ever heard of one. As a writer that loved the book The Taqwacores, I approached watching the movie with some hesitancy. Would the movie do the book justice? Would my favorite scenes in the book make the movie cut? Would it be genuine to the actual scene that had manifested since the book? Would the actors play the characters the way that I had pictured the characters in my mind? Would burqa clad Rabeya be able to emote through her chador?
Simply put, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
The book is written in the first person format from the perspective of Yusef, and many of my personal favorite pieces of words from the book are the internal dialogues that Yusef has with the readers. In the movie, these sections are left out in exchange for visual and audio experiences. Respectfully, the viewer is given just enough of a visual and audio experience where they are able to extrapolate their own definition to the nuanced scenes. The hesitancy quickly fades as the movie takes you on a journey where the brevity of dialogue pulls the humor and punk rock attitude of the situation in a way the book couldn’t. In fact, the actors were able to put humor into their lines and serious situation, making this an unexpectedly laugh out loud movie.
The movie aesthetically had the cloudy gray punk rock grittiness that I had pictured it having. It was also able to honor the real life music of the scene in a way that the book couldn’t. If only that the book was written before any of the bands had been created.
But what blew me away at the first screening was how much the taqwacores on the big screen reflected what I had slowly seen as real life Taqwacores. Not only were The Kominas, Sarmust, and Al Thawra playing through the soundtrack of the movie, patches and posters with their names on it were emblazoned on the costumes of the on-screen punks. The conversation about bands recording on cassette tapes was one that I’d had with kids in the real life scene. Johnny Cash not being country was a conversation that I’d had with people in the scene. The conversations Jehangir had with Yusef about not being Muslim enough were conversations I had with people in the scene.
It was like my reality and fantasy had collapsed within itself.
I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling this while watching the movie. As Jehangir and Yusef drove in the car, Marwan tapped on my arm. “That’s my song on the radio that they are listening to,” he whispered in awe. “It’s an Al-Thawra song.”
I went for a walk alone in the night time snowy cold after the screening. People were celebrating the movie, but I needed some time to process what I had actually seen. I had to escape and needed space. I eventually found myself at Dolly’s bookstore on Main St., and wandered over to the shelf holding Knight’s books. I grabbed The Taqwacores book off the shelf and thumbed through the pages. Holding that book was like holding a familiar friend. I read through favorite passages, looked for scenes that I had just seen in the movie. When I had first read the book three years ago, it was before I had met anyone in the scene. I was drawn to the fantasy world that Knight had created in his book because it was something that I related to. In the three years since reading the book, I had been immersed in the scene, hanging out with the bands, writing about my experiences, becoming immersed with defining this culture and community as my own. The fiction taqwacore had slammed into my reality in the most surprising way. In my new bizarre world, I didn’t know what was real or fantasy anymore. And that was a strange feeling, to feel like I was living in a fantasy world.
There was only one feeling to describe what I was feeling. It was like I was in a circle pit. But instead of having the empty space in the middle, it felt as if the circle pit was a vortex, growing tighter and tighter into the center. It was like the pit was inverting in on itself, an implosion inside of an implosion inside of an implosion of punk rock madness. Benevolent chaos.
