Writer Tanzila Ahmed is on her way to Sundance, America’s premiere festival of indie flicks, held yearly on the snowbound streets of Park City, Utah. From her home base at the Taqwacore house (peopled with those who produced the film of the novel being shown there and the bands that soundtrack it), Ahmed will bring us a daily dose of indie celeb news. Learn more about her and her work here.

The Taqwacores By Michael Muhammad Knight

My copy of The Taqwacores is ratty and dog eared. I’ve read it one and a half times. It’s the old version, not the really old kinkos version, but the version where Michael Muhammad Knight is sitting in a dumpster surrounded by trashbags and a typewriter on his lap. When I had coffee with Rasika Mathur (who plays activist punk chick Fatima) the week before she went to set, she was holding on to this very same book. As I talked about being a Muslim punk girl growing up, she would take notes on the inside cover of the things I would say. She wanted all her notes in the same place, so that she could be inspired, she had told me at the time.

The next time I met her, she gave me that very same book. Notes on the inside cover of things I had said. She had signed it though, with a little heart.

I took the book with me when I went to Boston for a week in September. It had been a Taqwacore Eid Al Adha where I spent the whole Eid with the Taqx posse and I had the hopes of getting Mike to sign my book there too. But in the end, no time really seems the right time to pull out someone’s book out of your purse and ask them to sign it. Without seeming like a big dork. So I came back with the book, rattier than ever.

I debated bringing the book to Sundance. I really wanted Mike to sign my book still, but felt sheepish about it. We were on a first name basis. It felt almost a little too late now. In fact, I wanted him to sign all my books – I had bought Blue Eyed Devil, Osama Van Halen and Journey to the End of Islam over the past year. But taking four books to Sundance to get him to sign them seemed a little excessive.

Mike Knight will be doing a book reading at Sundance next week too – so it wouldn’t be too out of the blue. The reading is going to be at Dolly’s Bookstore on Jan 25th at 2pm – 3pm. He’s going to read excerpts of The Taqwacores, of course. Maybe I’ll take my copy of The Taqwacores and get him to sign it there – maybe that would be less weird. And maybe I can get everyone else to also sign the book, since we’ll all be staying in the same house anyways.

It could be like the ultimate Taqwacore yearbook.

And yes, I am such a big dork.