traced for years by her fingers until the ink
began to gray the way she coaxes a smile
from my mother & clears the shadow from her face
the way she growls out every letter of my name
in approval how i can’t imagine her ever afraid
though when she is home we don’t watch the old films
or sing the old songs or ask too many questions
my mother never talks about it except the one time
after khaltu hala heard me humming the song
about the pearl necklace & eyes bulging
voice hoarse told me to leave & go home
knocking gently on our door hours later
a little pearl ring passed from her hand to mine
her embrace bright with the smell of oranges & soap
apology muffled by my sweatshirt’s thick fabric
that night my mother voice hushed told me
about the officers that cut khaltu hala’s hair the long scars
striped down her back the thousand things
she will not talk about in hopes of erasing
that whole country & starting again here
brand-new & i almost wish she hadn’t told me
& for weeks after i did not want to listen
to the songs & every photograph looked sharper & ugly
& gave off the faintest smell of copper of blood
& now i mostly try to forget the story & return to loving
the dream of home & the pearl never leaves my finger
Mama
though the story about khaltu hala hurts i do not
want my mother to stop telling stories she who
so rarely tells anything at all i ask
about my grandmother loved flowers about
my mother as a young girl i wanted to be
a dancer & when i ask about my name
she frowns a little squinting as she chooses
the words i had a whole other name picked out,
did you know? but when your father died
i don’t know it felt like that name belonged to him
& i couldn’t bear to keep it without him so i picked
something else & i feel that old pang of being
second-best to that other girl my ghost-self
yasmeen
Overheard
my mother has guests over & i am hiding in my room
humming to myself & looking through my tin box
of artifacts the photographs again my mother as
a painted bride my parents dancing i put the pictures
away the cassettes & hear my mother calling me
to greet her guests hello fine thank you
i’m almost fifteen school’s fine
arabic’s fine alhamdulillah you too
& i duck back into hiding
& i hear khaltu amal with the tattooed eyebrows
who is not actually my aunt & who always smells like ghee
purring to my mother she could be such a pretty girl
& my mother mourning my unkemptness sometimes
she won’t even brush her hair & i don’t know why
she insists on wearing that sweatshirt all the time
i have to pry it away to wash & khaltu amal again
her cloying voice remember when we were girls?
the daughters we imagined we’d have? & i hate her
& her pink-gray face her still-brown neck she hasn’t
bothered to bleach to match i hate her armful
of clattering bangles the way she touches my mother’s
arm & pretends to be her friend the way she wrinkles
her nose whenever she enters our apartment her own
apartment large & expensive but filled with awful gaudy
objects i giggle a little to myself at the memory of haitham
saying to her straight-faced
aunt amal, would you agree that money can’t buy
taste? though my laugh dies as i hear her continue
to mama remember the girl you wanted to name
yasmeen? with yellow ribbons braided into her hair
such a pretty name i never understood
why you chose the other
& in the mirror i try to unknot the hair tangled at my neck
& of course there’s no point i give up & stare
into my blurring reflection my body filled
with strange static & see only a smudge where my nose
& mouth should be only the eyes
large & blinking & intact & when i blink again it’s back
the same unremarkable face
Mama
of course i know my mother is lonely
her days & nights spent mostly in the company
of ghosts so much of who & what she’s loved
she speaks of only in past tense though mostly
she keeps quiet i can’t help but imagine
that her life was enormous before we came here
loud & crowded & lively as any party
& then the final notes of the song & everyone
is gone except me & i feel my own smallness
as i try to fill her life’s empty spaces
though they gape around me like the one pair
of her high-heeled shoes i used to love
to play with when i was little so much of our life
feels like sitting at a table set for dozens
who will never again arrive the two of us surrounded
by empty chairs my mother is lonely
& i am her daughter her only i think that might be why
i’m lonely too
The Photographs
the photographs are how i piece together
my imagining of my mother’s first life
when she was aisha life of the party
a girl in a yellow dress who was going
to be a dancer loved & laughing
& never lonely a whole life stretched
before her in the company of friends
& family & the man she chose
who chooses her & knows all
her favorite songs who watches her
with awe & never dies his life
braided tightly to the long bright ribbon of hers
i don’t think she even knows i have them
these pictures i’ve had them for years
in the box i keep under my bed
& she’s never noticed because she never
asks for them because she hasn’t looked
at them in years
Mama
when i was little i always tried to make her smile
it’s why i learned the songs why i learned all
their words why i learned to love them
the smiles were always rare though lately they feel
even rarer & in their absence i keep myself company
with the songs she taught me to love the dream
of a lost world where she was happiest
i miss him too my father though we never met
i miss the country that i’ve never seen the cousins
& aunts & grandparents i miss the help
they could have offered the secrets they knew
that i never learned of how to keep her smiling
Overheard
it’s saturday & i wake messily sweating & crumpled
& somehow sure that it’s closer to afternoon than morning
through my closed door i can hear mama &
khaltu hala
their easy chatter a low hum the clinking of sugar
being stirred into coffee something meaty & unfamiliar
wafting its smells from the stove when i move to investigate
i hear a shriek & rush to open the door see my mother
doubled over in her seat her shoulders shaking
& for a sinking sickening moment i’m sure she’s crying
i turn to look at khaltu hala to find out what happened
but she’s smiling shaking her head as mama rises
face shining with the tears i’d suspected
but she’s laughing
trying & failing to catch her breath before another peal escapes
khaltu hala catches my eye motions to the kitchen
i made turkey chili go make yourself a plate i point my chin
quizzically at mama my eyes on khaltu hala for an answer
& she chuckles your mother is making fun of my fine
american cooking she keeps calling the chili
white people curry & another peal rings out from mama
alongside khaltu hala’s hoot of laughter
my own fit of giggles joining them
Another Life
in the dream i am back home & i am beautiful my country
wrapped like an embrace around me my god not hated
my language washed of all its hesitation my father
alive alive he never gets into the car that night
(my mother will not talk about it except to say
there was a car an accident) in the dream
he never gets into the car stays home instead reading
poems aloud to my mother rubbing almond oil into
her already-soft feet sitting for hours on the front steps
of their house pointing to the moon’s perfect reflection
in the river below in the dream he stays alive stays
alive alive stays alive to meet me
Baba
i think if he’d lived my father would have been
a famous singer crooning & preening in a shiny suit
his hair dense & dark or maybe an artist
throwing clay onto a potter’s wheel & shaping creatures
from its mass like some sort of smaller god or maybe
an athlete muscle & vein cording in his still-strong legs
a scientist serious in goggles & white a writer pulling
stacks of books from his knotted brain a television star
his face so familiar he’s almost everyone’s father but
always mostly mine coming home in the evenings
to swing me up onto his back & run circles until i’m dizzy
holding my hand in his callused grasp teaching me
the songs he loved the songs he danced to
with my mother unwidowed & smiling with all
her teeth twirled in the living room
dress billowing over her calves loved both of us
belonging to someone tied together by the belonging
by my father my father no longer gone
Haitham
tonight haitham does the funniest impression
of abdel halim hafez pitches his voice as deep
as it will go & croons all my favorite songs
on tape so beautiful that they make me want to cry
but when he does them i can’t choke back the laugh
i join him in my own awful singing voice
& his grandmother is so superstitious but also maybe
just irritated by our squawking voices drowning out
her television program tells us not to be so rowdy
at twilight because that is when the fine skin between
our world & the next is thinnest
don’t run after sundown because the jinn will trip you
don’t raise your voice or you will call them to our side
& i’m supposed to be too old to be scared by these things
but it works & when haitham opens his mouth
to sing again i suggest we watch a movie instead
Boys
simply put haitham has other friends
though outside of school back in our building
his time is mostly mine always home when i knock
always knocking when i’m home
but at school where we have no classes together
& different lunch periods i see him sometimes
in the hallway where he will always smile or wave
then return to startling laughter from the mouths
of his friends that tangle of big-shouldered boys
their smell of musk & salt crowded around haitham’s
smaller frame though among them he seems not only
to fit in but taller their crown jewel
their beating heart
for a while he tried to invite me places with them
movies & parties & diners & the arcade & i’ve never
said yes always too shy & feeling increasingly
hot & confused by their boy-smell their big teeth & hands
the ways i sometimes want both to be looked at
& to disappear
i think always of the version of myself i’d want them to see
to look at in awe to never look away that better
& beautiful version of me that version named yasmeen
deserving of each & every pair of their eyes but as myself
i am mostly happy to wave back to haitham in the hallway
& sneak a glance at the backs of the other boys’ unturned heads
The Mirror
some nights when mama is working late
& haitham is with his other friends
i sit at mama’s dresser its enormous mirror
stretched before me mama’s rarely used jars
& powders darkening my lashes flushing
my cheeks carving cheekbones into the roundness
of my features a yellow dress from its hanger
wedged in the back of mama’s closet its bright silk
from a forgotten time
& in the mirror i become another girl i become yasmeen
i practice smiling & laughing & imagine myself
talking to the boys i imagine that i am beautiful
i imagine someone is looking i play as if
for an audience i coach a twang into my voice
& twirl a lock of hair around my finger
tonight the hair catches in khaltu hala’s ring
& i barely have enough time to untangle it
& slip mama’s dress back into the closet
i hurry into the bathroom as she arrives
Videos
what i’ll never share with anyone is my true
guilty pleasure every weekday after school
the hour or so before haitham comes knocking on my door
when my mother is still hours away from returning home
i’ll push the coffee table off to the side & watch
american music videos try to shape my limbs & waist
to match their dancers their high-heeled singers
& imagine my body as one of theirs instead
& i always feel a little less lonely
loving these songs that everyone loves too
but tonight with the volume turned high
i do not hear my mother’s key in the door
& she walks in to find me trying awkwardly
to keep pace with a dance missing the beat
& then c
atching it only to miss it once again
& when i turn to see her standing smiling
watching me the shame courses hot
through my now-frozen limbs & i am so
embarrassed i start to cry i scramble
for my room & will not emerge for dinner
avoid her eyes for days until i’m sure
she will not mention it
English
most of the other kids in my arabic class
learned english like haitham did by talking
to people speaking up in school going
to movies with classmates being invited
to sleepovers to parties
when haitham & i were younger we would mostly
speak to each other in arabic until one day
when he announced that if we were ever going
to lose our accents we would have to speak
english with each other though these days
we kind of have our own language
a perfect mix of the two so we never have
to translate & the words can come out
in whichever language we think them in
i didn’t learn the way he did by talking
to anyone else by making any other friends
i learned alone at home with the television
with the radio learning those songs too
not just the ones from back home i knew all
the ones from here too sang them softly
to myself in my room in the shower
training out my accent shaping my mouth
around the twang sparkling & new
English
standing at my locker i stuff books & papers
into my backpack to go home laughter & chatter
buzzing all around me i imagine myself
as its silent center a black hole in the universe
a big group of boys & girls are clattering together
down the hallway joking & squealing
as one of the boys reaches to tickle a girl
her giggles & shrieks piercing the entire hallway
before she breaks off into a run to escape
& he follows knocking into me & sending
Home Is Not a Country Page 3
