GS: One's journey never seems to end. But, sometimes, as you journey away from your own familiar territory, you open up dimensions of your own self.

ZH: When they say on the plane, "We are flying over Iraq" or "We are flying over Yugoslavia", you feel so disconnected with what is happening on the ground. I really prefer to travel by road. A part of me does not want to dissociate from the reality - as we fly over the clouds, we don't know what horrors are taking place on the ground.

Zarina Hashmi. Atlas of My World. Woodcut. Edition of 20. 2001.

GS: Is this how you arrived at the series on the nine cities? These are perhaps the most searing, tragic, and profound of your works. Did you start on this series after 9/11?

ZH: With The Atlas of My World, I had made the wall and floor plans of my homes, and had relocated the borders of the countries I had visited. I thought therefore that I could make maps of the cities in which I had lived. I remember being struck by a photograph of Grozny in the New York Times, where you could only see rubble left! It was almost an aerial view, and I cut it out and kept it for sometime, and then, I threw it out - I don't like too many possessions and I didn't know what to do with it. Actually, when I did Remains of the City, that image was at the back of my mind. Then the news started to come in about Sarajevo, and I started to collect maps, and I moved on - to Iraq, Bosnia, Beirut.

GS: In the past ten to fifteen years, so many cities have been violated, desecrated: Grozny, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Beirut, Jenin, Baghdad, Kabul, Ahmedabad, and finally, New York.

ZH: The Chechnyan war is often called a forgotten war because there is nothing left. Nobody raises a voice or says anything. I was watching TV and there was this Chechen woman who said, "The world has forgotten us". I had a conversation with myself, and I said, "No, I haven't." So, I thought, somebody has to say it - that Chechnya existed.

GS: Many of the cities that you have worked on, except Baghdad and Kabul and Ahmedabad, are not known names to many of us. You must have had to do a lot of research.

ZH: Most of my research has been on the Internet. I had arthritis and could barely walk. It was very hard for me to go to libraries and sit there. Luckily, around the same time, I got a computer and put it to good use! I also have this habit of reading that I have inherited from my father.

GS: Did you read everything you could on these nine cities?

ZH: Yes, on these cities and the countries in which they were located and their conflicts. I read a lot about Chechnya: how Stalin had put the population in trains and sent them to Siberia, and then, how many of them died, a hundred million - a huge number! I didn't know much about the Balkans. I read about Sarajevo and its history - so it is not that I am just making little maps up!

Zarina Hashmi. Baghdad. Woodcut.
Edition of 20. 2003.

GS: I would like you to talk about Baghdad, because I think Baghdad is a very crucial turning point in history.

ZH: I think that's true for all Muslims: Baghdad is the third or fourth holiest place. You go to Mecca and Medina and you are in awe but you can't stay - it is very hard to have a personal relationship with these cities. Baghdad has been a centre of Islamic spiritual and philosophical thought, its schools were the legendary 'houses of wisdom'.

GS: Very few people remember that, Zarina! There is the occidental view of it being a trade-centre, and there is, of course, Sindbad the Sailor! People have forgotten much of its great heritage. They have forgotten that Iraq was not only the cradle of civilization - it was not only Babylon, it was also a very great centre of Sufi learning.

ZH: At the time of the Abbasids (750-1258), works of Plato and Aristotle were translated from Greek to Arabic and the knowledge of the ancient Greeks was saved, to be shared with the rest of the world.

GS: I remember you mentioning a library that was burnt in Baghdad.

ZH: Yes, there was a very big library in Baghdad which was plundered in the 13th century by the Mongols. They killed everybody, they plundered the library, and they threw the books in the Tigris. I read during my research that the river became black for days because of the ink - that image has stayed with me.

Zarina Hashmi. Atlas of My World. Srebrenica. Edition of 20. 2003.

GS: And that image is so appropriate: your woodcuts are also in black and white.

ZH: I was reminded of the story when I was carving the block. Many Sufis and scholars are buried in Baghdad. Many of them were hanged and killed. Alhaj was crucified: they burnt his body. Religious persecution was very political in nature... Then, there was another Sufi saint, Junaid, who was considered the first sober Sufi - otherwise, they were singing or dancing like the Chistis of Ajmer and Nizamuddin Auliya... The Chisti silsila believed that music was a way to reach God - as did Maulana Rumi who was born in Herat. His parents moved to Iran, where, of course, he met Attar and his life changed. The first Sufi book I read was on Rabiya Basri. There were also other women among the Sufi pirs, but their works have not been translated.