our taxi driver to muhajareen,
the neighborhood where
our grandmothers
giggled as schoolgirls together,
refused to go up the hill.
“it’s too far, too steep, impossible,”
he shakes his head & mutters.
we notice jars of honey in his trunk
& ask about sweetness in his life.
his eyes soften & he tells us
about the bees, his children,
how they survived their own
genocide during the siege,
how he drove the bees
up the mountains himself
when they were sick,
how he coaxed them
to kiss flowers in their
heavy daze, how
the honey was sparse but
the most resplendent
it had ever been.
& he pushed us up
the mountain,
we five syrians &
ten honey jars, back to
our grandmothers’ home.
Relearning My Mother Tongue When 10,000 Angels Appear Before Me[1]
inside the body, like rice in squash or pillow stuffing :أحشائي
It’s so hard to write
when there are sirens outside my
window. A rose bush grows inside me;
her thorns line my spine; her branches
span my arms; her worms come out
in the toilet; her soil spills
from under my toes; and when I
speak, petals fall out of my mouth
standards, norms :معياري
I know I talk too much. I hear
this a lot. The standard is
talk [not too much] listen
[a lot] silence [some] respond [well]
but in my family it’s talk
[loudly] respond [louder]
interrupt [loudest]
intimate, familiar, close :حميمي
I brought pink geraniums to your
grave; when I placed my
head on the ground where your
chest would be I heard your
heart beating
obsessed, fixated :هجاس
After it happened my dad told
me I was obsessed with your
murder; you had not even
been laid yet into the ground
belonging :الانتماء
Where does our grief belong?
Can I slip it into a poem,
a quick cry? It’s been fourteen
years of a dictator’s impunity
and fourteen years since I
opened my mouth to speak
bold, publicly :جرأة
I am wearing an orange dress
on my brown skin in front of
a clear white sea. My face
was all over the news in Syria
and I was only sixteen. Here, it
is a running joke. No one knows
what it means
relevant :حامي
Syria fades from the news; your
body becomes cold under the
ground; 300,000 spirits of Syrian
women killed transform into stars
above the city of Babylon, a Facebook
page circulates a list of their names
amazed :مدهوشة
Their names: Weyam, Yasmeen,
Laila, Iman—these are
names of my friends,
branches of the same
tree. In olive season, we
shake down the leaves and
carry the fallen with a blanket.
These amazing meteorites of grace,
brilliant women. When I walk into
a room a caravan stands behind me
haunted; nostalgic for a place :مسكونة
Maybe I am obsessed with her death
the way I am obsessed with
living. I miss my grandmother’s
kitchen; ten sweaty women on our
knees folding grape leaves; the
henna paste stacked high into
pyramids, the mother cat has
come to the door to feed her
children; this little refuge
I poured my energy :صببتُ إهتمامي
I poured my interest into
Syria hoping she would return
my calls. Not only has she
left my messages on read—
she moved on without me
immersed :منغمساً
Not only do I demand
the freedom to speak, but I also
demand the freedom to fail.
I am immersed in the delusion
of love and I won’t stop
calling her name
temporary, not permanent :مؤقتة
I believe the regimes are
temporary; that we can rehearse ourselves
into new realities;
that red raincoats
and red graffiti on the walls
will be enough
to attract an irreversible fire;
a sweet breeze and I remember
the 99 names of God; a passing
relief from an unyielding sun.
I am obsessed with her death
obsessed with her heartbeat,
obsessed with the longing I have to bring her back,
the army of women who insisted on speaking
immersed, in each other,
their voices, dafs and
tambourines, the only songs
I want to know.
[1] For Halla Barakat and all Syrian women lost to femicide and regime violence.
Grown
I let my blood water fig trees &
I visited olive groves that defy time
& I travelled to the southernmost
tip of the world searching for return &
I preserved what I could of my own
voice & I imagined myself
in my language, embellished in curly waws,
& I embraced medicine women hoping the madness
would stay away & I let floods overturn
my body & I bravely faced uncertainty
& I gazed into my shadow
& I reconciled with my mother & I braided
my hair with thorns & I stood at the border crying
“let me in!” & gathered rose petals for my
perfumed return & I was robbed
of the bright moon over my village,
of sandalwood smoke & hardened red clay,
of frightened donkeys & familiar neighbors, the bitter
unending evenings of winter, the scent
of cherry blossoms, & the simple
dream of our ten thousand
year old home
Artwork Courtesy of:
