Building Utopias in Anhalterra - Part II.
Maral Sai lays barefoot with her head tilted back and her eyes staring at the sky. As I approach, a vast holographic sign shimmers above us, its letters pulsing: "An eco-social just world has space for grief and celebration. " Maral wears a flowing pashmina dress, with a length of cloth draped loosely over her head. Pinned to her chest is the badge of the Utopia Planning Council, inscribed: "Feminist Redistributive and Restorative Justice. "
Maria: Hi. It is the 7th of August, 2052. We are recording live from the patio at Anhalterra commune. I'm Maria and I will interview Maral, one of the founding members of Anhalterra. She had been a pioneer in laying down solid foundations of the Utopia Planning Council on "Feminist Redistributive and Restorative Justice. " Are we ready?
Maral: Yes.
Maria: Can you please introduce yourself?
Maral: Sure. I was born in Pakistan and am now a resident of Anhalterra. My pronouns are she/her and I am 47 years old. I had grown up in stark realities of losing out my autonomy to the structures of neo-colonialism where I had to surrender before the financial neoliberal mechanism of debt. It was a tough situation growing up in the 2030s debt crisis and severe climate disasters. My childhood was beautiful though, growing through family land of mustard seeds that kept me motivated enough to be the person I am today. However, that too became unlivable due to extreme heat waves.
Maria: How would you describe your role in this commune?
Maral: So I am working as a feminist economist and grassroots planner and organiser. Back in the days, I was part of organising committees in Pakistan that had pushed for debt cancellation, food sovereignty, and housing rights in the face of mass privatizations. There was a brutal crackdown in 2035, after which I had joined a transnational solidarity network linking South Asian activists, Pacific Island and the WANA (West Asia and North Africa) region resisting both financial colonialism and ecocide.
Maria: When did you realise that the social contract had truly collapsed?
Maral: It wasn't a single moment. It was the drastic, gradual changes-each one leading to more and more dehumanization, crossing red lines over and over again. The human rights 1rhetoric no longer made sense. The fundamental question was: if we have laws to protect basic human rights, then why are they being violated in the first place? And secondly, why does history keep repeating itself, while people are forced to prove and provide evidence just to earn their right to live? It simply stopped making any sense. So, basically it was the neoliberal, patriarchal, imperialist structures and regimes showing huge cracks and cleavages. Everything from the impact of austerity policies to crackdowns on peaceful demonstrations and campaigns, revealing the true nature of the systemic crisis.
Maria: How did austerity policies affect your daily life, especially as a woman and caregiver?
Maral: It's been tough. Pakistan had long been dependent on loans from international multilateral organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank-even for social projects such as investments in cash transfers, education, and health services. By the time Pakistan took its 27th loan in 2032, we were already trying to rebuild the economy after devastating floods and crop failures. This had a compounding effect: women and children were displaced, and public infrastructure-roads, electricity supply, schools, and more-was eroded. Additionally, because the country had to repay those loans, more public money, collected through our taxes, went toward debt repayments rather than social services. As a result, women's shelters received less funding, and cash transfers to families were reduced. So you could ultimately see the effect on The cost of living increased sharply. Staple foods like flour and wheat became expensive, and nutritious items like fruit were priced far beyond reach-even though Pakistan is an agrarian country. Most high-quality produce was exported to earn revenue for the state budget, rather than being purchased by our own population. Meanwhile, femicides, child poverty, honor killings, and gender-based violence against women continued to rise. And it wasn't just Pakistan-countries across the WANA region and beyond were trapped in a cycle of financial colonialism.
Maria: When you speak of femogenocide, it feels deeply personal. How has that trauma lived in your body and how does it guide the way you build, care and resist today?
Maral: So i think what i can say is that...(Swallowing and sobbing gently). I lost my parents to the heat wave while my only child, aged 10 years old, succumbed to the collapse of the healthcare center. She got in contact with a virus after the latest floods of 2036, and we could not find the right health treatment for her because of the medical sector's incapacities. We tried our best though. My partner is still with me and we have been trying to rebuild since then.
Maria: Thank you for sharing that. It's a lot and it surely is tough so i appreciate you felt safe to share it with me. Can I ask you, what was the first thing you and your group did when you arrived?
Maral: I slept. I slept a lot. Honestly, it was part of the healing process. I just wanted to sleep and let my body feel... nothing. It was a feeling of sukoon. In Urdu, we use this word to describe an ultimate, profound sense of calm. Then, the process of grieving-and healing-began. It was a collective journey. When I arrived here through my network, Aunt Inaya was the one who helped me migrate to this place. She used to be an au pair in Germany, leaving behind our children in Kasur (sub-urban area) in Pakistan. She had been working on the shift of the child care center here. And now, here I am, remembering and rebuilding-together with so many of them.
Maria: Wow! That is powerful. Can you delve a bit more into the vision for building this space?
Maral: Yeah, so the vision was to create the space for sharing, grieving and healing. It is a tough process, and for new systems to be created, you cannot start from the same cycle. It has to be regenerated and recreated and for that one needs to renew itself but not like a 'happily ever after' . The reparations for rebuilding include emotional, physiological and psychological nurturing and that is what 'social reproduction' theory is all about.
Maria: You've mentioned before that your vision of a happy future isn't just "happily ever after" in the way the past decades have sold it. Can you expand on that?
Maral: Yeah. For me, a happy future has space for grief. Not just joy, but also holding space to live with struggle and trouble. It's not about letting grief store inside us-more about letting it move through us, collectively. That's integral to the kind of future I imagine and this is what has brought me to this commune. This is the ultimate principle which we had brought to make this commune liveable.
Maria: So, grief is part of the blueprint for this new society?
Maral: Exactly. We need enough space to work through trauma and difficult experiences. But also space to celebrate, to work together, to heal.There's a project in Mexico city commune that's a good example. A fellow comrade told me about it-it's part of a women's shelter.. Women who've escaped violence live there, raise their children, and run the place together. They have daily structure, learn solidarity, receive lessons about feminism, and get space for grief and healing. But through daily work, they stop drowning too deep into sadness. That kind of balance-grief and celebration-that's what I had intended to see here as well.
Maria: When you talked about the joy of celebration, the International Court of Justice had given an advisory opinion on climate justice in 2025 that had brought the concept of reparations to go beyond monetary compensation for damage to ecosystems and communities, but also restoration of ecosystems with the acknowledgment of emotional and physical exhaustion in affected communities. I heard someone mentioning how that was a foundation used to have a care economy framework in this commune.
Maral: Yes that is very true. You know about this famous saying of Audre Lorde - ''The masters' tools will never destroy the masters' house' . This is exactly what we envisioned. The capitalist system has been emotionless-it only sees profit. The reason why we had 3seen a live-streamed genocide erasing an entire civilisation, just to aid the defence contractors so that 1% of the world's population could be the richest upholding an empire. We always needed spaces that center emotions in decision-making. That means storytelling, lived experiences, and building safe spaces, even in small-scale communities. We used that legal framework to define the rights of the marginalized individuals in our commune - the right to care, right to live, right to education and the right to development. These rights were recognised,represented, redistributed in roles, and then rewarded. We have introduced a credit system for the rewards that are used to grant fair compensation, social recognition, and supportive policies-like living wages, pension credits, or universal care income-for both paid and unpaid caregivers. And bear in mind, we are not talking about money here.
Maral: On another note, we aggregated and collected lived experiences of the individuals as part of the population consensus. It's hard to imagine, but grieving was connected to nature. Planting, tending fire, water as cleansing-it's a spiritual practice. This reconnects us to ourselves and to the earth, something capitalism and colonialism had ignored for centuries now.
Maria: So you are providing a decolonial way of creating a redistributive economy framework from different angles. You also incorporated how spirituality needs to be an essential principle for envisioning this commune? Is that right?
Maral: Yes. The system we broke through-and resisted-was purely transactional. Bringing spirituality back changes the questions we ask: What are we giving? What are we taking? The system we lived under for generations depended on emotional dissociation to survive. Wave after wave of austerity measures stripped more from the human body and from nature. The deeper I look into it, the more certain I become: feminism and justice rooted in love naturally create space for grief and celebration. It's intuitive.
Maria: Can you elaborate on this?
Maral: Sure. As part of this planning council, we're working to break away from the way money defines value today. So, what replaces it? A social contract built on ongoing relationships. If someone hasn't given back for a while, the response isn't punishment-it's an invitation to participate more.In the past decades, the mechanism of debt only took from us. If we couldn't return what had been given to us for repair, we were punished-pushed into borrowing more, trapped in a vicious cycle. That cycle cost lives, deepened poverty, and expanded unpaid care work. It reinforced gender roles, turning women's and children's bodies into a toiling ground for more labor. State funds went almost entirely toward repaying debt. We paid taxes so the state could hand our resources back to international organizations and foreign creditors-at the cost of starvation, unsafe schools, and a care system that failed our children. And that's why I keep returning to what I said before: a system rooted in love and justice doesn't fear grief or joy. It recognises both as part of the same fabric that keeps communities alive. When value comes from relationships rather than transactions, care becomes the foundation-not a casualty-of our social order.
Maria: I see your point. Can you state an example of this vision?
Maral: Let's take an example of community kitchens, for example, the social contract is different. Everyone gives-time, food, skills-and it creates abundance. Under capitalism, scarcity and protectionism dominate. Here, generosity motivates more generosity. I have been learning that gift economies build trust. Money erodes it. It is about rebuilding trust in people, and that shifts everything. I prefer "sharing. " Share what you have more than you need, and trust others to do the same. We already depend on each other for everything; money just hides it. Money reinforces private property- "I bought it, it's mine. " Sharing or gifting changes that relationship. And I've been researching alternative systems where if someone can't give for a while, it's seen as a sign they need help, not shame.
Maria: That's interesting-support based on need rather than debt.
Maral: Exactly. It shifts the mindset from suspicion to care, though it's not without human challenges like resentment. So I guess, ownership is the root question. Without shifting mindsets toward empathy and love, no system-gift, barter, or otherwise-will really change things. Even the concept of "gift" has been co-opted by capitalist logic.
Maria: And you've been exploring this in your own work?
Maral: Yes, and I'd like to invite anyone here who's interested to keep working on it together. It is a camaraderie effort to build a system to break away from money. The one without the weight of transactions - whether money or obligation - hanging over every interaction. So, a future with space for grief, joy, solidarity, and trust. This is what the rethinking of functions of money should look like when we are shifting from currency hegemony. No more Gross domestic Product (GDP) calculations but rather rights-based approaches creating the redistributive and restorative system.