Amber Hammad Once upon a time in loveland

This work is about love. It is about the colonisation of the lands that I and my ancestors come from, and the colonisation of the lands I now call home. It is about missing the birds of Lahore [in Pakistan], while falling in love with the birds of Sydney. It is about my post-colonial/post-migratory dreams of finding my true composite self, yearning for a home that probably doesn’t even exist, like a mystic lost in search of their beloved: ‘in the groves of love the peacock cries’, as Punjabi philosopher and Sufi poet Bulleh Shah put it in his poetry.

Amber Hammad, 2023