Hashim Bakr | Literature & Philosophy. @HashimReads

Sometimes, a memory endures not because of what was said, but because of everything that could not be said in return. — Hashim Bakr

@bernardtjoy Perhaps the past is not as distant as we imagine. Sometimes, centuries of history reach us through something as ordinary as a piece of fruit, making time feel unexpectedly intimate.

@Saskers2022 @NextStagePress Forster's life reminds us that the questions of concealment, belonging, and authenticity that run through literature are not confined to fiction. Sometimes the life behind the work illuminates the work itself.

I write about literature, identity, memory, and the experience of being an outsider. On Substack, I explore how the characters we read sometimes help us understand the lives we live. If these themes interest you, you're welcome to read my essays. hashimbakr.substack.com

@Freeburian In Macbeth, Shakespeare explores the destructive power of ambition: how the desire for power can lead a person to cross moral boundaries, only to discover that gaining the crown may mean losing oneself.

and I wonder why my own path unfolded so differently. Is it possible to spend an entire lifetime waiting for a love that never arrives?

At this stage of my life, I remain alone, having never met that elusive woman. I look around at friends and relatives who have long since built lives and families together,

You don't find belonging by altering your shape to fit a space. You find it by creating space for who you actually are.

@parisreview Sometimes, reading does something similar. We encounter words that help us recognise truths about ourselves we have long struggled to articulate.

Forster's words helped me recognise truths about myself I had long struggled to articulate. For a long time, I wondered what connected me to Forster. Perhaps it was this: recognition without complete disclosure.

@bernardtjoy Sometimes, reading a book becomes a way of reading ourselves. A character's experience may awaken a memory, reveal something we hadn't recognised, or give words to something we had long felt but couldn't express. In those moments, reading becomes a conversation with ourselves.

As I continue writing my memories in Hashim’s Journal, I wonder how many torn pages remain undiscovered. Some memories stay with us for decades before we understand what they mean. Perhaps writing is how we finally learn to read them. #Memoir #Memory #Identity

@malik_alee66879 8

Perhaps this is a kind of forced exile: discovering that the self I carry within me has no obvious place in the world around me, even when I have never been physically displaced.

Navigating through my past, I could hear the voice that made me feel like an outsider: the voice of what kind of person I was expected to be. When something inherent within me does not fit the available shape, I become an outsider without ever having left my home.

hashimbakr.substack.com/p/the-characte…

“How annoyed I am with Society for wasting my time by making homosexuality criminal. The subterfuges, the self-consciousness that might have been avoided.” — E. M. Forster

One quote from E. M. Forster changed how I understand literature and identity. It captures the psychological toll of a society that forces people into subterfuge, dividing their inner selves from the selves they present to the world.

Perhaps this is one of the most meaningful things a writer can give a reader: not ready-made answers, but a clearer way of understanding questions the reader has carried for years. — Hashim Bakr

Through reading him I found a way to speak freely without telling everything. I finally found the language to recognise myself.