The Things I Would Tell You

by Sabrina Mahfouz

  We can talk to the leave voters all we want, and we can blame old people if it makes us feel good, but they are not the people in charge now or in the future. They did not create this and this does not serve them. I am lucky enough to have experienced higher education among the elite, the artistic and political leaders of tomorrow. They are scary. They think their white liberalism is ***Flawless. They pretend to listen but they do not hear a thing. They use our bodies and our stories, they hold us tight in photographs and they pretend they can’t see us when we finally collapse, just like their daddies did. They put our heads on sticks and call it multiculturalism. They are the kind of people who will read this and think I am talking about someone else.

  As the days continue, well-meaning Americans make conversation with me about Brexit. Every time, I feel a wave of sickness, pain in my chest and a scramble of thoughts, flashbacks, half-words, reveries. I hold my stomach and speak through long, measured breaths. Despite moving to New York on a scholarship to study the mental health effects of oppression, I am finding it so, so hard to admit to myself that a news story is making me feel as though I’m dying so many times a day. I wish the white people telling me that I need to be gentle, that I should talk to those who are different from me, had any idea what it feels like to be this tired.

  We will talk. Right after we have dragged the UK’s legacy of violence from under its ugly, expensive carpet, after we have learned it, taught it, remembered it, accepted it as an explanation for everything we see. We can talk after we have taught our children mental and physical self defense. We can talk after we have spoken to each other, about mental health, survival, and the anti-blackness we perpetuate within our own communities of colour, oppressing black people in a space they should be safe. We have lots to talk about. If only middle-class white people would stop talking.

  In 1980 my mum, a first-generation Pakistani living in North London, won a writing competition aged sixteen, using the prompt An Event of Importance to my Community. In it she writes:

  Today it is unsafe for any Asian person to walk down the street without his colour, speech, or dress being made fun of. You, the readers, may think that I am exaggerating, but the truth of the matter is, that noone has yet realised the seriousness of racial prejudice… I fear that by the time we grow up, we will be too full of bitterness simply to sit down and talk things over. If anything isn’t done, we are going to explode and you will explode with us.

  We explode every day and we piece ourselves together again. We explode for our ancestors, when we don’t expect it, and then again when we remember. We explode every time our trust is abused, every time it becomes obvious noone heard us, every time we have to retreat, thicken our walls that keep us locked in, angry, safe. We explode.

  Hibaq Osman

  The Things I Would Tell You

  The Things I Would Tell You

  If you squint hard enough at our building

  it starts to sink into the backdrop of

  Green Dragon estate.

  I’ve spent a lot of time sitting here squinting

  turning pebbles into rhinestones,

  this is the closest I will come.

  Here,

  clovers bet on each other

  the first to lose its luck,

  same way young boys kiss each other with bruises

  they say ‘this is how it’ll feel when the world loves you.’

  Seems you lost yours long before I knew what loss was

  and between this place and the schools we shared

  I find parts of you scattered.

  I would tell you

  I thought you were at The Pit,

  lashes deep in the soles of every dream kicked into free goals,

  every alleged mugging that went down

  and weed pushed by policemen into the pockets

  of men too young to inhale anything

  but the pollution they were born into.

  Immigrant kids speak a language

  only broken souls can read,

  same one you were fluent in.

  You gave away a tongue and picked up another

  padlocked language, recognised your lungs

  in pages of Arabic script.

  When your name is Amin

  it’s no wonder you found yourself

  at the end of our prayers.

  I would tell you

  Mum has nightmares still

  a fresh scar torn every day while I slowly forget your face

  and if this world is a stage then brother I am nervous

  shaking, pushing words out too fast,

  trying to catch my breath

  and tripping over things I haven’t said yet.

  I would tell you I am lonely,

  the kind of lonely only ghosts of family members can fix –

  the kind of lonely that just sits.

  They say I am a woman now

  but if this is womanhood they can take it all from me

  there aren’t enough clovers in the world

  and your pictures are fading faster than I recall.

  I’ve decided to stick to only counting your birthdays

  it’s one of the few things that keeps me from putting

  and end to my own.

  And now I’m here,

  squinting at a building I don’t live in any more

  writing this for you

  hoping it will be enough.

  July and the Following Months

  I think you are lucky

  not because I feel you have not been through hardship

  nor do I think everything has been handed to you.

  I am sure you have worked to get to where you are

  but I think you are lucky

  not because I could walk a mile in your shoes

  in fact, I am almost certain I could not take one step

  out of my own body

  but you are lucky

  to be able to detach yourself from stories like this,

  to enter and exit conversations as you wish

  how you can drop your two cents and walk away –

  you are lucky to be able to walk away.

  How you can be called ‘rational’

  when you say things like ‘at the very bottom of this case a man

  was murdered, he should have been put away for that.’

  While I wonder how it is so easy for you to call him a man

  when I could only ever call him son, boy, child.

  You do not have to carry this on your back.

  On the night I found out about the verdict

  I paced up and down my street, wondering who would be next

  putting love hearts on post-it notes warning black families

  not to watch the news the next morning.

  Not guilty meant ‘you are unworthy of our protection even in death.’

  Not guilty was a white flag that did not mean surrender.

  Not guilty told us even parents do not empathise

  with the murder of our children,

  that they will always be on trial

  no matter who pulls the trigger.

  You will always hold your right to bear prejudice close to heart,

  you will distance our kids,

  make them anything but human

  just to see if you can still

  hit the mark

  from here.

  I think you are lucky

  to be able to have a bird’s-eye view

  while we stand in the middle of it,

  one eye to the backs of us, the other on our feet

  making sure we are ready when we need to

  Run.

  Matchstick Lips

  You told me not to wear my words with a smile,

  said this was not something I should want to caress in my palms,

  not a crown I should wear

  or a cheque I should cash.

  We do not have the privilege of being asleep –

  our bones ripped away fr
om muscle,

  sharpened and used as spears.

  This is not a competition, not a talent,

  only aching and oaths, only blood and scars.

  This is no human song.

  I’m not sure if I have ever been asked harder questions

  than of the evening I told my mother I was a poet.

  Says: daughter, are you proud of what you do?

  She has many questions I do not have answers for.

  Wonders if I am mourning,

  if I’ve spilled enough tears to replace the ink

  of all the pens I’ve broken out of frustration.

  Says: daughter, this is not new to us,

  this poetry born of so-called illiterate minds

  of bloodshed and Moving and Moving,

  do you not know you come from nomads?

  There is no Home here or there

  there is only journey,

  there is only pebble-ground and bush fire,

  there is only moonlight and struggle-hymn

  this can’t be a best seller,

  an award winner,

  this can only be truth.

  Sharing yourself comes easy

  when the stories you tell aren’t your own.

  You might pray for serenity

  or the calm of closing lines

  but I’ve learned

  if you treat every poem like a eulogy

  it’s okay to feel like something in the room has just died.

  Okay to profess your words as truths,

  to speak from quivering lips and keep hands in pockets,

  to never look the listeners in the eyes

  for fear of losing yourself

  for the final time.

  Mother,

  on the few occasions you’ve told me you loved me

  you made it sound like an apology.

  This is what I am running from

  and also what I am running to.

  I do not wear my words with a smile

  and sadly

  this is the only thing I have in common with you.

  The One I Try to Forget

  In the space between

  clean clothes and fresh breeze,

  I remembered all the times you apologised.

  how I caught the drink off your tongue

  Heavy scent on ripped shirt

  Looking back, I do not think myself weak.

  Survival is our every strained breath

  and I have become accustomed to swallowing wind.

  I’d ask you,

  how dark was your hurt in daylight?

  Have you rid yourself of a rotten heart? Rotten hands?

  Did you pray for a sleep that did not come?

  Have you ever, even once, touched a body with caution?

  When you made your way back to

  women who trust you

  hiding my screams in your pockets

  Where did the guilt go?

  I store mine under my eyelids

  I am reminded of you

  If simply blink too hard.

  A Year From Home

  April

  We were told the land had a whale’s mouth

  of ocean for each household,

  free-flowing and unrestricted

  I packed four necklaces that ward off evil,

  Drooping eyelids, batteries

  and bags of air in case I missed home

  July

  The school is called a ‘comprehensive’

  My cousins say this is a good thing,

  the queen herself must know I am smart

  August

  There isn’t as much water here as we thought

  With bare feet I walk a patch of grass

  the sun hell-ish ball of light

  Burns insignia into my nape

  November

  I’ve shortened my words, y’know?

  Sit at the sides of rooms and beg to be smaller,

  My teachers don’t look me in the eye

  We don’t have heavy tongues no more

  I whisper my words into nooks and crannies

  This is how the English are

  February

  Worship here is different too,

  There’s no spirit to feel,

  Only eyes at the back of my head

  My great-aunt taught me how to sigh

  She’d say: soft but deep, soft but deep

  Or the ancestors won’t hear you

  In this land, they are all you have.

  Azra Tabassum

  Brown Girl

  Brown Girl

  (After Megan Falley)

  Brown girl,

  be quiet, quieter,

  softer. Dumb

  yourself down, read less,

  don’t think so much

  about the knots in your belly.

  How it hurts when they

  tell you brown girl

  don’t laugh too loud,

  don’t say too much.

  Brown boys don’t want it,

  don’t like it.

  All your dance, all your giggle.

  Your spine or your knuckles,

  those boldfaced ugly opinions.

  How dare you, brown girl,

  put your chin up, meet their gaze

  head on?

  Where is your shame?

  Who will want to marry you,

  with that attitude?

  With that snake tongue?

  With all your fire and your venom.

  Brown girl keep your eyes down,

  brown girl keep your legs shut,

  brown girl, disappear,

  slowly, gently,

  so they don’t see you dimming.

  Turn in on yourself.

  Switch the lights off.

  Brown girl, listen.

  When your auntie tells you

  sshhhhhh,

  when your mama says

  your hips are too big,

  your mouth is too wide,

  and those words, the bite of them,

  how could you, brown girl,

  be more than that, how could you?

  Green Street

  She was there like that,

  in the gauze of Green Street,

  wrapped in an emerald sari,

  her mother’s, her grandmother’s,

  centuries tucked in creased

  crêpe linen at her waist.

  Eyes on the brown boys,

  cast downwards. Up again.

  A man offers her cheap eyeliner.

  £1.50.

  Only a pound if it comes

  with a smile.

  He swarms in her direction

  like a wasp, buzzing

  for the sweat of her skin.

  ‘Not today.’ She tells him.

  Somewhere on Green Street,

  someone is sinking their teeth

  into a hot chicken samosa,

  wincing.

  Pernicium

  The burning houses came first –

  and then the people.

  Growing new limbs from strange places.

  Hands sprouting from necks,

  wanting – to be touched again

  and not touched, again,

  there was silence and then nothing

  once, long ago faceless children

  pressed fingers into fingers

  rolled in the sandpits together –

  before regret,

  loose-limbed and uncanny

  grew like ivy around them

  and turned them sallow, milk-less,

  crumbling in the wind

  from the ceilings and the sky,

  un-filling the bodies, again

  – the mothers who lost their babies

  and ran howling into the wind after them,

  how they came back empty-handed

  with new eyes in their foreheads

  clutching handfuls and handfuls

  And God, And God

  The dead crawl out of the woodwork<
br />
  soft hands, soft thighs, dripping eyes and wombs,

  mouths first and swollen with words.

  The women.

  My grandmother leads the procession.

  She meets me in my bedroom

  against that fading light

  To tell me she is sorry that love

  was an untangle of veins inside of her,

  how he is still cradled against her hips

  Even now, the callous of his hands,

  hard against her caramel brittle bones

  sharing all that unshed warmth.

  The men.

  My uncles, not the bedroom – it is too intimate,

  the kitchen, where they talk about tiling,

  and ask me why my hair is so short

  To tell me that God is as gentle

  as we’d thought, and taller

  than we could ever believe.

  My father.

  He comes with his heart softening

  in his hands like melted butter,

  the things i would tell you

  the question mark of his mouth turned inwards

  To ask me how I could spill lies so easily

  from the same throat we shared, half and half,

  him and my mother and the man.

  My mother, but the man I love.

  My father, but the man I love.

  And God and God

  and God.

  Selma Dabbagh

  Take Me There

  He’d walked by her when he got back. It was late, which had meant she’d had to sleep in the afternoon before he returned if she was going to keep herself awake until he returned. But even when you took average times into account, he was late. He did not speak as he came in, but placed his collection of laminated IDs and paper permits on the table next to the front door, pushing them under the tissue box, so that they were far enough away as to not be seen, but not too far from reach, in case the soldiers came that night. He remembered to do this, but he neither hung his jacket on the hook, nor removed his shoes. They muddied the corridor with packed sand as he passed her, neither taking in her ironed shirt, nor the way she had arranged her hair, which was in a style she had not tried before.

  He could not avoid the food though, there were ways she had been taught to bring a good man like him around and to keep him to heel and this was one of them; the vine leaves were smaller than a baby’s finger and she knew they were better than his mother’s. Abu Rasha had supplied the wine, three bottles at a decent price and these had been lain on their side on a rack he had constructed out of bamboo, nails and pipe cleaners following instructions he had found on YouTube. He did not talk during the meal. He looked up once and raised his eyebrows, at the shirt, the rearranged hair and let them fall again to the plate as though he was saying, If you expect action, you’ll be needing another man. He found no fault with the food and told her one benign event from the day, one little insight into gossip from the man in front of him at the turnstile who was a cousin of a woman she had been at school with. It was neutral information about a work permit being obtained and she had learnt not to seize upon this kind of disclosure as though she needed it, or to feign excessive interest, in a way that could come across as being patronising, by trying to make the day seem better than it was. Behind him, above the sink, the curtains were drawn to keep out the concrete that took everything away from them, and to block out the glare of the spotlights that were affixed to the top of it. They preferred it that way, but at one point he turned around to check on it as though wondering what was wrong.