Q&A with Noori

Did you struggle to converge the different languages all together in one poem, or did it come naturally?
Growing up speaking Urdu and English and hearing local languages like Punjabi and Hindko (understanding them but never picking them up) allowed me to exist where everything is possible (what is translatability if not possibility?). So, visualising the piece was simple enough. Its synthesis was a bit of a struggle because I normally do not write multilingual pieces, so deciding which words remain as they are and which ones should be translated within the text was entirely new to me.  

What role do you see the metaphysical realm playing in your piece?
The title itself invokes the metaphysical into the piece. Barzakh is the place in Islamic mythology where the spirit goes to after they die where they will remain until the Hereafter. One can imagine Levi-Strauss, along with Faiz, to already be in barzakh since they have passed away, or even Meursault since he, a fictional character, is both real and not real at the same time. The return address in the title feels contradictory. Is the speaker alive or dead? I don't quite know. The thing about multilingualism is that you live - inside your head or otherwise - in a waystation between where you're from and where you're supposed to go, so it feels a lot like you are in barzakh.  

From the disjointed sentences, sensory details, and dramatic changes in the setting, what purpose does the surreal and script-like quality of your poem serve to its meaning overall?
As a reader, I see those elements serving to defer the poem's meaning because you are left with all these questions unanswered even though you get the overall image. The speaker and the piece are also aware of drastic shifts within narratives that keep on occurring because of translation, which is why they 'rue the pipe symbols and the wrong side of the page.' Just when you get used to one voice, the setting, sometimes the speaker, changes. As the author, I cannot say how the things are meant to contribute to the meaning.