To Live and Relive

TO LIVE AND RELIVE

by jessie fox

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t o l i v e a n d r e l i v e

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F I R S T E D I T I O N

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a dedicationTo Rizq. Thank you for opening up and sharing a world with me I may have never known.

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t o l i v e and r e l i v e

a story about r izq

THIS PLACE WAS CALLED THE GHETTO, BUT IT WASN’T THE GHETTO. THE GHETTO WAS IN THE PEOPLE.I N T H E P E O P L E

C O N T E N T SFROM THE BEGINNING

STORE FRONT

GIVING BACK

R I Z Q M U H A M M A D

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15th and Susquehanna Avenue

To start from somewhere and end up nowhere near the beginning. To have good intentions, but bad habits. To have a good heart, but not always execute its natural intentions.

From the streets one takes lessons. Lessons that only come to you if you walk them. Walking up and down the neighborhood owning names, owning corners, and owning the lives you have unwillingly become responsible for, while owing yours at the same time.

To grow up with a lack of something so simple as the preconceived notion of love. To turn away from it and face something much worse, something that you have to go out and find. An evil that later becomes your manifest. To push away from loved ones only to grow away from any love at all. To cause pain and to feel pain, a distinction that soon deems the same throbbing qualities.

To take and take was only stealing from your own conscience. A realization that becomes a new way to live; to give back what you never had. A life well lived, a divine reasoning to seek the beauty in others. To understand good from bad is one thing, to live by it is another. Choice becomes a way of living, tributes to your actions.

Educated by the concrete jungle. Stepping between every crack and deteriorated innocence evasively placed between. To become hardened by the very streets you step foot on. To take on the physical qualities of your surroundings as they start to define who you are. Like the signs on the streets, a name and location become your only portrayals.

A guiding light and premeditated dream. To see what you’ve done, blessing the everyday visions that you still live on to see. Embracing life as a gift, one that others can begin to benefit from. Feeding the human soul with a simple happiness that stems from doing better. Doing better for yourself means doing better for others. People grow physically on a continuous variable, but when does the mind start to grow? The mind grows from the supplements of life and what we see to be of importance.

An education defines us from one another. It allows the mind to attach

and detach and to a build a certain character. Experience from others can become a valuable facet into the secrets of life. The laws of life are not printed in a book, or written on a chalkboard, but whatever is written forces us to aspire, to connect to, and expand on.

Things that no body did for me become an immediate dedication to a second chance at life. To correct what was wrong through an undeniable vitality. To make a difference in young minds can make a difference in the world. The world in their hearts, the world in their families, and the world within their lifetimes.

Reality verses a dream. A dream that encompasses the hope for all youth. The reality that only one-step at a time is within our reach. To succumb to the heroic qualities of Superman. An everyday struggle to fight against all evils and separate the bad from the good. To see in others what they might not see within themselves. A dream that they were never told about. A dream that they have been told would never be within their reach.

A sanctuary for young minds to aspire. A big heart once jaded by the evils in the world. A big heart with a purpose still lives to simultaneously beat with the forever moving time. A chance to give back and undo all the hurt that had been done. To forgive and relive, to relive with your back turned away from the past.

F O R M E THINGS THAT NOBODY DID FOR ME

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INTRO

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INTRO This is a growing story about a man who grew up on the streets of North Philadelphia. From gang wars to pain, loss, and love came a foreshadowed future. A man that caused an unwilled hurt to his own upbringings survived to overcome his past and give back to what has been lost.

These pictures revisit a past and delineate a more positive fate. It isn’t about where we have been, but about where we are going because of that.

A man imbued with a strong moral compass.

FROM THE BEGINNING 1

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The streets as they once were

Carver High School- 1650 West Norris Street, Philadephia. First high school Rizq attended at age 14.

Money you can get back, but you can’t get a life back. Don’t die for a dollar. 16th and Fontain Streets. Part of Rizq’s gangland in the ‘70’s.

“This building use to be one of my favorite bars.” -Rizq17th and Fontain Streets, North Philadephia

My old house stood here. I still remember the names of all my neighbors. I can remember growing up here like it was yesterday.

-Rizq

All this land right here use to be a cemetary. This is where would we all meet and hang out at night. It was scary, but quiet.

-Rizq

North 16th and West Berks Streets, North Philadelphia

STORE FRONT 2

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15th and susquehanna. a place to work

GIVING BACK 3

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An education can change a life

I see them doing something that will help the children. Things that no body did for me and anytime I see anybody helping others, I want to help too. They want to help black children so they don’t wind up like I did. They don’t want them to wind up dead in the streets and I don’t want to see them wind up dead in the streets. So many black children these days, especially younger youth, are getting killed out here because they want to be on the corners. I keep telling them that I use to have the same morals, but I’ve had my own friends turn on me. And they just look at me, some listen and some don’t. They look at me and say, “Let me experience this for myself.” And I tell them, you’re not going to experience what I experienced, you are going to experience death. And once you see death come after you, it’s not no experience, it’s all over. There will be no more coming back tomorrow.

See, I was blessed by the Almighy God to come back tomorrow and see another day, to learn another thing about this day here. The streets kill. They gave me an education, this concrete taught me a tough lesson.

a c o n t r i b u t i o n t o

Tree House Books is a non-profit organization on a mission: grow and sustain a community of readers, writers, and thinkers in North Central Philadelphia.

“Rizq has been a good friend to us for several years now. He and the other gentlemen at the food stand usually offer advice and insight to the kids when they are buying items. He also helps serve as “eyes and ears” for the neighborhood. If there are unproductive things that are happening to our kids that I am not aware of, he lets me know. He also makes supply donations when he can, informs me of community events and opportunities for the kids, and attends our community forums when he can.

-Michael Reid, Program Coordinator

T R E E H O U S E B O O K S

R I Z Q M U H A M M A D 4

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Fortune is humanity and a lot of people don’t understand that

I’m still here, I’m still doing my thing. I’m not no richer that I was then. I’m more poor now than I was then.

One thing about it is that it’s bad. See, every time I would try to sell some drugs to anybody else it would kill my spirit more than it would kill theirs because my spirit would die faster than theirs. Their soul would die, you know what I mean? When you kill another human beings soul, that kills yours soul five times more than your killing theirs, so I had to stop. The profit was good to me. The money was good, but it didn’t satisfy me because I didn’t gain nothing out of it. I didn’t accomplish nothing. I was killing other humans, my own race. Not only was their

physical body dying, but their soul died more. And when their soul died mine died too, and that was taking all my spiritual values away from me. Every human being got a soul and the soul got to live because that is what carries your flesh around. I’ve learned so much and then people still start coming back to me, even pregnant women telling me they want this they want that and I would say, I can’t do that. You know what I mean? Their killing that baby that’s inside of them and I’m a part of that. That baby is growing inside and I’m part of killing it. If I am killing that soul in her womb, do you think my soul is not dying?

a p a s t . . .

I was never really attached to it, it was all about making that fast money because they wouldn’t give me no job when I came home from the penitentiary. Selling drugs wasn’t worth my health and it wasn’t worth my life.

I was never really attached to it, it was all about making that fast money because they wouldn’t give me no job when I came home from the penitentiary. Selling drugs wasn’t worth my health and it wasn’t worth my life.

I don’t want to feel no hate. It’s the things we say that creates hate in our hearts.

I pray five times a day. God knows my heart. That’s the thing, God knows your heart better than you do. He knows what your going to do before you even do it. This project is the beginning of something that others can’t stop. This has already been manifested before we even met.

I ain’t weak, I’ve never been a weak person

F A M I L YEverytime I got locked up my mom wouldn’t come down at all, not one time. She always use to tell me, “If you get locked up, it’s on you because I raised you better.”

I haven’t seen my oldest sister Margret in over 30 years. My mom died in ’75 and that was the last time I saw my oldest sister. I got two sisters and one brother, we never was a tight family. My family was so far apart and everyone was for themselves. My youngest sister, that is why she was so mad at me. She was only 15 years old when I went to jail and she feels as though I left her out here on her own. I always told her, what could I do? You knew what I was into. When my momma died I was in upstate New York in the penitentiary. My mother was a strong woman. She was real strong and sometimes I think about her so much. She had a good heart like I have. I think about her and think that they are doing the same thing to me, but I’m stronger than her, and they ain’t gunna be knocking me down. Anything they do is gunna make me stronger. I ain’t weak, I’ve never been a weak person.

My parents didn’t drink alcohol. My mom never drank or smoked cigarettes. That was the best thing about me growing up.

My brother was my father figure. He whooped my ass all the time, you know what I mean? He use to tell me I wouldn’t be no punk. When we would go out in the neighborhood he would pay his friends to fight me. He would say, “This is the real superman from the Valley. There ain’t no superman but him.”

I would ask him why did you name me Superman? And he would say, “Cuz you the biggest one out here. You’re my brother, I had to put you above them. You are the Superman.” Now I look at it and think about the cartoon and see how Superman would fight against all the evil and bad. Now I’m thinking to myself, I’m out here doing all this bad stuff and I’m supposed to be out here protecting everyone?

I gang warred for 10 years straight. There was a time where you couldn’t even sit here.

To me at that time, it was wrong, but to me, that is how I had to survive then. Sticking up, selling drugs, whatever it was, that was my survival. That is what kept me going. Now, I would never do nothing like that again, never.

My left eye, I got it hit with a pipe. It got split wide open, and I was fully blind for several years.

Now I have all these bad dreams about dead people who I done hurted. They come into my dreams. I mean I have good dreams and I have bad dreams, but mostly bad ones about my past. My dreams show me my past so I won’t go out and do those things again. They say: This is what you did in your past, this is what you want to do again? You think you are going to survive in this day and time? Look how you survived that, you think you can survive that now?

D R E A M

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