Jason Arday for Those Who Were Not Meant To Be Here
They taught us
to imagine the world
with a centre.
And, conveniently,
the centre looked like them.
From there
they measured civilisation,
intelligence,
beauty,
genius,
belonging
as though brilliance
required a passport.
But history kept
misbehaving.
In Timbuktu,
knowledge crossed deserts
before Europe learned
to call itself
the keeper of knowledge.
In Baghdad,
a scholar gave algebra
a language.
In India,
Ramanujan pulled
astonishing mathematics
from a mind
that refused the limits
others had imagined for it.
In Egypt,
Ibn al-Haytham
questioned light
until seeing itself
became a problem.
Again and again,
the supposedly peripheral
produced minds
that made the centre
reconsider itself.
Yet somehow
the centre remained.
Not geographically.
Psychologically.
Institutionally.
In the architecture
of whose voice sounds
like knowledge
before they have spoken.
In the invisible hand
that decides which genius
is called exceptional
and which is merely
called lucky.
In the peculiar suspicion
reserved for brilliance
when it arrives
wearing the wrong skin.
Jason Arday's death
does not give me
permission to invent
a cause.
I will not do that.
But it does leave
a question standing
in the room:
What happens
when scrutiny becomes
a spectacle,
when a person
becomes an argument
before he remains
a person?
Who is believed?
Who is doubted?
Who is permitted
to be imperfect
without becoming
evidence?
Who must be
extraordinary
simply to be considered
ordinary?
And who holds
the keys?
If creation
did not discriminate
when it distributed
consciousness,
who authorised us
to discriminate
when we distributed
belonging?
Perhaps genius
was never waiting
for permission.
Perhaps the world
has never lacked
brilliant minds.
Perhaps it has lacked
the humility
to recognise them.
Look closely
at history.
The centre keeps moving.
The genius keeps appearing
where nobody expected it.
And every time
the world says,
Surely not here,
someone answers
by becoming undeniable.
So perhaps
the centre was never
the centre.
Perhaps it was only
the place from which
someone acquired
the power to point
and say:
You belong there.
I belong here.
Until another mind arrives
from somewhere
they were never
supposed to look
and quietly
moves the world.
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