On my bookshelf rests one of my favorite books, Stray Thoughts, Winged Words by Zakiah Sayeed. When I ordered this book, I was going through a rough patch in my life. Reading the words inside gave me the lift I needed – a giggle here, an insight there, a moment of pause and escape from my own world. This deeply personal collection of poems and stories seemed to be written for me specifically, and they came at a time I needed them.
In her words:
“I cannot honestly say that I am the best person to write this book. Who knows, there could have been someone better to do this. But given my family history, my country of origin and the way I think in a different language, makes me believe that I am the only one who could feel the way I feel about different things. Some thoughts and feelings are probably borrowed from childhood, or heard from the older people at home, or my educational experience in itself, that have helped me along in the writing of this book.”
Zakiah Sayeed is a remarkable woman in every sense. She is a physician from India who had to overcome many barriers to come into the States to practice. Zakiah is a Muslim woman, with beautiful brown skin and an other worldly accent who had to prove herself superior in every step of the ladder. Her academic scores allowed her to attend a American Mission College and Hospital, whose enrollment was 90-95 percent Christian, graduated with honors, and began practicing in the States in the seventies. Medical school was simply the first place she felt like an outsider – practicing medicine in America during this time was not a welcoming environment for an Indian Muslim woman, especially when fewer than eight percent of the medical doctors were women.
Despite her environment, Zakiah remained the graceful woman I know today. She grew up full of trust in a world of innocence and maintained her untainted love for life and humanity despite the prejudice she faced. It may have been this very environment that propelled her to become an author. Zakiah spent time doodling, writing and creating in her spare moments in her office, sleepless nights between physician calls, and any time in between. She wrote on napkins or scraps of paper. Though the words that flew from her fingers often surprised even her, she didn’t dream of capturing them into a book.
Zakiah was always a mother first, a physician second. She has the grace and gentle manner to make everyone feel welcome and adored. In her own words, she said:
“I always wanted to be a physician. But I didn’t want to be only a physician. I wanted people to see me as a woman who could feel the earth and listen to her songs of not just today, but the songs of other times in another part of the world.”
Writing was not only her passion, it was part of her being. Writing is essential to who she is.
Zakiah stumbled upon blogging and gained a large audience who urged her to collect her writings into a book. Digging through a folder she kept at her desk, she sorted through decades of work; some in Hindi, some in Urdu, some in English. She collected the pieces that spoke to her and consulted her attorney about publishing.
Zakiah told me that writing the book was the easy part, publishing was much more difficult. Initially, she dismissed the idea of self publishing. After rejection letters and unreturned phone calls from multiple agents, she refused to give up. Knowing there was already a very large fan base of people who wanted her work in their hands, she consulted an author who self published his own book. Thus, Stray Thoughts/Winged Words came into print.
I asked her advice, what she would recommend to authors that have a book waiting to be published or waiting to be written? Her response was very humble.
“Far be it for me to give advice to anyone. I have seen some brilliant pieces of work on Xanga by very polished and sophisticated writers. In my humble opinion, I would tell them what I did personally and follow your heart. I think it just clicks, when something really good comes along and you know that that is a good feeling.”
1. Do your homework. She spent many months researching different publishing options, reaching out to other authors for advice.
2. Share your work with others for different sources of evaluation. The feedback she received on her pieces is what helped her determine which to use and which to leave out.
3. Maintain a blog or social media connection that can support you and help you with exposure.
4. Never give up. Don’t let the frustrations, the rejections and the discouragement keep your book from coming to life.
5. Most importantly, follow your heart. Follow your passion. Trust in yourself.
Here is a link where you can purchase this book. This is a book you will read more than once, and will give you many hours of pleasure. It has been a great joy to me.
My Eyes
Please don’t listen to my eyes
They tell unbridled stories
Just feel the language of my heart
It will hold you in its chambers
No questions asked.
You can find Zakiah’s blog where she is very active here. If you would like to email her with questions, you can reach her at alabeti@gmail.com.
Everybody has the ability to create something remarkable. Whether it is a book of poems gathered over a lifetime, a new invention, a music recording, we have something to offer the world. Zakiah’s story helped me realize that persistence, refusing to give up, and keeping your heart open may be the real keys to success.
The book preface, which should have been included:
Life is an individual journey—taken collectively.
Human beings share the journey of life, making connections, coming together and breaking apart in peaceful quiet or crashing explosions. Experiences are shared, but perception, understanding, and conclusion are affected in the innermost spaces of our beings. The baring of these personal truths, the sharing of our encounters and the nature of our viewpoint, however, is what creates a sense of community and shared experience that fulfills us in ways we cannot replicate alone. It is the paradox of being human: our aloneness and togetherness at once integral to whom we are.
For author Zakiah Sayeed, baring her soul to the world, releasing these intensely personal thoughts and feelings, is a freeing experience. Within these pages are solace and inspiration, happiness and sorrow, and a warm feeling of connection and shared understanding. Free verse poetry and flash fiction, it relies on stream of consciousness and ethereal connection cascading into awareness rather than preconceived rhythm and rhyme, her words true to the cadences of being, each a pulse—a reflection—that when viewed in their whole portrays a stunning breadth of emotion with resonance and beauty. Combined with prose and artfully crafted letters that provide insight into her life, her children, and her grandchildren, her fearless honesty displays for all to see the truth of her being.
Teaching that a doctor can treat us with a clinical, scientific mindset in one moment and share a passionate tenderness the next, Zakiah Sayeed weaves past and present with fiction and reality as she welcomes you into a vast expanse of raw beauty wherein the joy and ecstasy of life mingle with the pain and sadness, creating a moving portrait of the human experience. As sweeping in its emotional journey as it is intimate and affecting in its pointed observations, Stray Thoughts/Winged Words is a powerful meditation on life, full of quiet intensity and spreading calm.
