Yours Is Not the Taj Mahal

My friend Inken died in a car crash in Algiers, Algeria on the way to the airport with her children after visiting her in-laws. No one else in the crash was hurt, but Inken was killed. Her father was in Frankfurt at the time, waiting to pick her and his grandkids up from the airport. Instead, he got on a plane to fly to Algiers in order to attend her funeral. Inken had converted to Islam and in keeping with tradition needed to be buried within 24 hours. One of her friends sent me his unofficial eulogy along with a photo of her gravesite. He warned me that it looked more like a construction site than a grave.

Inken and India are connected. I went to India for the first time when I was living in Germany and going to school with her. She is the only person who saw all of my slides when I returned. She listened to all of my stories. The Taj Mahal is a monument to a much loved Mumtaz Mahal from her husband, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I would have built something like it for Inken if I’d been able to, because we want to honor our dead with monuments that approximate the impact of their presence in our lives. We need to show others what we have lost.

I live in a culture where signifiers of Islam are considered suspect and dangerous. Inken converted to Islam and it saved her. It infused meaning, ritual and structure into her life. Like many converts she embraced her new religion fervently. She was a radical even before she converted (likely also why she converted), but not in the ways you might assume. She was not a fundamentalist. She believed in equality, justice, human rights and human dignity. She wore a headscarf and flowy clothing, which was not too far off from her pre-conversion attire. When I see a woman in a headscarf I am immediately reminded of Inken. I associate this article of clothing in all its variations with laughter, games of canasta in the park, amaretto drinks and my very first film festival experiences.

When I saw this woman sitting in front of a mosque in Jaipur with her child, memories of Inken flooded back. I had planned a film in her honor while I was there, but it was not coming together as I had hoped. Seeing this woman was like being with Inken for a moment and I filmed her. Inken and I had often spoken about the ethics of filming or photographing someone and this action was not without significant qualms and trepidation on my part. But filmmaking is sometimes a selfish act. A selfish act can also resonate with an audience.