Essay: In Remembrance Of The 2019 New Zealand Mosque Attacks

The DSM-V Diagnostic Criteria for PTSD

By Ren Martinez

I’m trying to write and I keep remembering

the brown of my husband’s hands

They are thin and strong-knuckled; he once stuck a pencil into the meat of his ring finger and now a thread of graphite runs through his nail (ingrained in keratin, indelible)

Twirling me around in the kitchen, our socks slipping on the floor as laughter rises like steam from the brewing teapot

Twining with the pale of my own fingers as we walk down grocery aisles, comparing the price between Clif and Luna bars before we decide on sugar cookies

Smoothing the pages of the Quran as he fumbles the Arabic rarely spoken
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(we blessed our house together, his Quran and my grimoire opened on our still-bare
dining room table; I spoke praise to the earth as he rumbled Allahu akbar Allahu akbar; he lead me through the corners of our house, the smoke of incense trailing after him, and I sprinkled salt in the corners. Afterwards, we ate cheap Chinese food and fell asleep to the smell of frankincense)

I’m trying to write and I keep remembering

his stories of all the things that fell in 2001

People remember the buildings but they don’t remember the first man killed in its aftermath; they remember that he wore a turban but not the color of the fabric (his name was Balbir Singh Sodhi and it was blue)

Walking in packs between classes, brown students keeping their heads down and their English unaccented—no one goes to their car alone

Buying a pair of brass knuckles, ill-fitted on his thin, brown hands, and ignoring the names that follow him like exhaust fumes (raghead—sand monkey—terrorist)

Keeping his heritage tucked in the pocket of his American Eagle jeans

(his family emigrated from Trinidad; his mom talks about the papaya trees in their yard
and the salt of the sea that surrounded them; he goes on fishing trips with his brother and they play All Fours, giving signals as subtle as coconut water. The first time I met his grandmother, I recognized the beautiful lilt in her voice, as melodic as a tropical breeze, because my abuela still had hers, even all these years after leaving San Juan)

I’m trying to write and I keep remembering

a breaking story from New Zealand

Nothing more than a blurb on a Reddit thread until it expands, engulfs; the wonders and horrors of social media never more stark (I don’t remember this episode of the Twilight Zone, but I know I’ve seen it)

Refreshing the CNN page every five minutes to unveil the latest details, each more horrific than the last

Huddling under the sheets so the light of my phone doesn’t wake him—I am pressed against him so tight that it’s a wonder he doesn’t wake up

Unable to cry but desperate to do so

(he doesn’t feel much of anything at the news; it’s an all too familiar hatred, one he’s
learned to shoulder since he was seventeen—thirteen—eight years old; we go our separate ways and I drag my friends to coffee, unable to conceal my grief and terror and overwhelming fury, a wildfire that threatens to devour anything in its path; after work, he pulls me into him, breathing into my hair as his brown hands crush my shoulders. He vaguely smells like incense)

“They were at prayer,” he says

It’s such a small detail.

It’s one I can’t forget