the banat al-nima dance school & on it a photograph
of my mother midstep & across from her
in the exact movement is me
& when i pull my tin box from beneath the bed
the one photograph remains my parents at the party
& with it is a new one of my mother here in america
in full color at some recent party yellow dress
swirling bright around her head thrown back
her mouth open midlaugh or midlyric
arms stretched above her head
as if in victory aisha bright & full of living
The Kitchen
i change into dry clothes & emerge from my room
to see my mother in the kitchen cutting fruit a pot
of lentils rioting on the stove i watch her quietly
drinking her in she looks younger less tired
less stooped around the shoulders undefeated
she turns her head & catches me looking smiles
holds up some tupperware & nods toward the pot
of food i thought we’d take this to the hospital
& have dinner with haitham’s family & the world i left
behind begins steadily to fade as i rejoin mine
& in my world haitham is in the hospital his body broken
struggling to stay alive & i fight the urge to dissolve
into tears into hopelessness over the fact
that i’ve changed nothing that matters i clench my jaw
to keep back the sobs & join mama in the kitchen
to scrape the burnt bits of rice at the bottom of the pot
haitham’s favorite into a separate container
for when he wakes up i reply to her glance
Haitham
when i met you we were so small so miraculously
unhurt unawoken by the dreams that make our mothers
scream out at night the whole world our private joke
the whole world a playground for our twinned brains
your perfect heart its daily forgiveness of my uglier one
when i met you i had a father or at least i had the dream
of one to lull me every night to sleep
photos to study to imagine separated only
by the spirit world’s veil a father who would
choose me & would have if he could have stayed
but now i have so much more i have so much to tell you
wake up i have so much left to say
when i met you we were such children believing neither
of us could ever die won’t you wake up wake up
& believe it with me again
Haitham
i approach haitham’s bedside my mother busying herself
unpacking the dishes his mother & grandmother each
in her own gnarled sleep in a chair
i don’t know if i’m allowed to touch him if it will hurt him
they’ve taken the tube from his mouth & his lip
has healed a little though his eyes stay closed
& solemn & i can’t tell if he’s breathing i lean in
to listen for a heartbeat for a breath
& his voice bubbles out unchanged
excuse me, a little personal space & i feel
like my heart just shot up to my throat
i straighten to look at him & his eyes
are wide open wide awake his grin
threatening to split his lip back open i squeal
& laugh & burst into tears
i’m sorry i wail & he cocks an eyebrow
winces a little & straightens his face sorry for what?
& when i reach for the memory of our argument it’s like
trying to remember a dream like trying to carry water
in a cupped palm all of it trickling slowly away i…
you… i… i can’t really remember
i blurt out sheepish he looks at me
mock-serious did you also get kicked in the head?
then laughs his enormous laugh
Haitham
when i met you i was already angry so angry
about everything i thought had been taken from me
everything i thought i did not have so busy looking
at my one empty hand i almost missed everything
filling the other
i think i spent a long time hating myself thinking
of myself as not enough thinking i was loving
everyone i loved by wishing a better version of myself
into their lives one more deserving more graceful
i think i could have been a better friend to you
instead of locking myself away inside my head
& invented memories locking myself away
inside the old photographs the old songs
& letting my whole life happen without me
is what i want to say but all i can manage is
i’m here now & i want to do better
& i’m sorry & i missed you & thank you,
thank you for waking up & haitham looks
for a moment like he is about to make a joke
& then miraculously doesn’t
instead says simply nima, you’re my best friend
but of course can’t help himself but didn’t
the doctor tell you not to make me cry
& i am already smothering him in a hug
pressing tighter & marveling at him so solid
& alive until i hear his muffled ouch
Home Is Not a Country
i’ve returned to my life only to find that things
aren’t all that different i go to school & wave
at haitham in the hallways & eat my lunch alone
in the company of others eating their lunches alone
though this morning while i make yet another
tragic sandwich my mother appears her face
determined & sets something neatly wrapped
in paper towels on the counter before me
nima, please, enough with those awful sandwiches
will you take this instead? it’s cheese like i know
you like, but it’s feta & i heated some pita & there’s
fuul & tomato in there too i can’t keep imagining
my daughter at school eating that plastic here she
casts a grim look at the neon slices of cheese
in their individual sleeves & i feel a dread
i hadn’t realized i was carrying dissolve as i imagine
myself eating a lunch that doesn’t make me want
to cry
The Singer
at the bigala my mother haggles with the shopkeeper
seriously? for just the one leg of lamb? can you prove
to me it descended from isaac? while i browse
along the shelf of tapes selecting two & bringing them
to the counter the shopkeeper barely glancing at me
before turning probably to shout back at my mother
but does a double take he lifts one of the cassettes
to the light oh, i love this one & sings dreamily
to himself in a voice like honey
& i recognize behind the scowling face i’ve always known
that singer from the party the looseness of his limbs
his freedom but it already feels like something from
a dream or an old film i watched once then lost to time
but still i say you have a beautiful voice, uncle
& my mother twinkl
es up at him you didn’t know?
back home he was something of a celebrity
& the laugh softens his grizzled face as he wraps the lamb
up for my mother & hands it to her consider it a gift
for the dancer & her daughter
Nima
& now on saturdays my mother teaches her class
rows of girls in all our people’s sepia shades
arranged eagerly before her in our living room
the furniture pushed back into the corners
as they learn all the shapes & the songs
& the particular language of the drum
i love to watch her teach & love it more when she calls
me out of my room to demonstrate one thing
or another watch nima she’ll say
& i’ll feel the eyes warming my skin
as i reach for the song & wrap it tightly around me
& my body responds in its language
Yasmeen
we’re back in arabic class haitham’s stitches healed over
& his cast covered in scribbled signatures
stickers & cartoons & though it’s his left
when the teacher brings over a quiz
& tries to hand haitham the sheet he lifts his cast
& announces this is my writing hand, sir
& is excused from all work until it heals
when the teacher turns i shove him in his
good shoulder liar you’re never going to learn
any arabic & he looks over face contorted
in pretend heartbreak my arabic is perfect listen
we collapse into laughter
before he finishes the lyric
& hear a third voice laughing with us a girl sitting
behind haitham leans forward over her desk
her round face is full of mischief eyes big & dark
& already in on the joke
her lips stretch into a smile full of large
white teeth gilded in multicolored braces
she smells faintly of sesame & flowers
something about her distantly familiar
though i can’t place it
& as if to answer the question i haven’t yet asked
she holds out her hand acting out a serious
handshake hi, i’m new, my name’s jazzy
& haitham raises an eyebrow
that’s not arabic, is it? come on, what’s
your passport name? & she makes a face
everyone calls me jazzy or jazz
except my mom when she’s mad then
she calls me yasmeen
Jazz
sits between me & mama fatheya on the couch
both of them engrossed in the same cooking show
while haitham sits by our feet trying & failing
to work a series of objects under his cast
to scratch his arm during commercials
jazzy rouses mama fatheya with her perfect arabic
& just as i feel a strange & ancient jealousy
unfurling in my chest
she turns to me & grins i hear you’re some kind
of nostalgia monster so i come bearing an offering
& from the pocket of her jacket she extracts
an unlabeled tape
did you know our arabic teacher was in a band back home
with a bunch of the uncles from the building? & would you
believe they were actually good? there’s an amazing cover
of this sayed khalifa song on here that i love
& we are instantly kindred she unfolds
her long legs from the couch & reaches
for my hand & as i grab it i feel a familiar
pressure in her grasp
that familiar scent floral & earthy
& echoing with something
i know i’ve known but have forgotten
& i blurt out not to be weird but i feel
like i know you from somewhere
haitham looks up from attending to his arm
& calls out all these love songs are making you such
a romantic to which yasmeen laughing replies
shut up can’t you see we’re having a moment, stupid?
& for a second her voice wrapped around the word
is almost a memory almost a song from another life
& when i reach for it it is gone
as the old cassette player
crackles out the song
where are the beautiful ones where did they go
Yellow
my dreams are vivid a world of blue & sepia
the smells of guava & smoke car exhaust & charred peanuts
a city built around two rivers the site of their joining
faces vaguely familiar brown skin shining with sweat
with perfumed oil a song that never stops playing
thick gnarl of a doum tree bright shock of bougainvillea
eloquent stink of that faraway river
& then i wake up pale sunlight streaming in
& the room lights up around me photographs taped
to the wall above my bed cassettes & cds shelved messily
in the far corner an arabic workbook splayed
on the floor filled with earnest cursive scrawls
i sit up & blink away the last of the dream
its colors retreating outside the day is unseasonably
warm i float sleepily into the morning
brushing my teeth splashing water
onto my pillow-creased face the kitchen wafting warm
& milky smells & back in my room spread
like a ray of sunlight across the unmade bed
is mama’s yellow dress calling to me almost
by name i rush toward it with a squeal
of excitement hurry out of my pajamas & slip it over
my head & the silk shimmers around me
like something liquid
i turn to the mirror & twirl like the girl in the photograph
like aisha before me & midspin i catch her standing
in the doorway the beautiful girl who became my mother
her face buoyant & alive as she claps her hands oh, nima
you were made for that color & i feel warm in the yellow
in my belonging to her as she names me my precious girl
my graceful one
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Even during the times when I did not know where I was from, I have always known those to whom I belong. My communities are my country, are my home, are my place in the world. This book is for them, and made possible by them, by the ways their love has held and shaped me.
Before this book, I might have been happy to spend the rest of my life only doing the things I already knew how to do. I am grateful to Christopher Myers for the invitation to grow, for meeting me for breakfast whenever I needed to remember that the tools I already had could be used in new ways. Thank you for your friendship, and for your faith in me. Thank you to Ammi-Joan Paquette, my agent, for the phone calls, for being the first reader of the manuscript that would become this book, for taking a chance on me. Thank you to Michelle Frey, my editor, for your care, for the warmth and rigor of your eye, for sculpting this book with me.
Every word I write is in gratitude to my many teachers, to the lateral mentorship I found among my peers, who are so unselfish with what they know, who teach me with poems and group chats and emails and long impromptu phone calls. Thank you to Elizabeth Acevedo, this book’s auntie; I am grateful for your sisterhoo
d, your generosity, and for the better worlds you’ve dreamt for us. Thank you to Clint Smith, to Team Cowork. Thank you to Team Mashallah, my siblings: Fatimah Asghar, Angel Nafis, Hanif Abdurraqib, Kaveh Akbar. Thank you to my Beotis family, to my Stegner cohort, and to the communities I’ve found at Cave Canem, Slam! at NYU, the DC Youth Slam Team, and Split This Rock. To Kamau Brathwaite, Louise Glück, Eavan Boland, Patrick Phillips, and Mark Bibbins—I am grateful for your classrooms and your considerate attention, under which I’ve watched myself blossom into newer and more infinite shapes.
To my childhood besties, my Scorpios, my long unbroken line: Basma Rustom and Awrad Saleh. Gonna love you forever, like I’ve been doing.
The greatest and most important honor of my life is being the daughter of Safaa El-Kogali, the sister of Almustafa Elhillo, the granddaughter of Habab Elmahdi and Eltayeb El-Kogali, a niece and a cousin to my huge and rowdy and incredible family. Thank you to my ancestors for all my names, for the stories. I hope you’ll never stop telling them to me.
Christopher Gabriel Núñez, my love, my lifelong accomplice. Thank you for building this life with me. Thank you for the hours spent answering and re-answering all my questions about narrative, for that syllabus you made me, for being my partner in every sense, for your enormous laugh and for making breakfast. This book is one of the thousand ways you are generous. Thank you for the gift of your family. Thank you to Margarita and Fernando, to Karina and Tatiana and JP, to tías Olga and Fanny.
To the global Sudanese community, particularly in the DMV and New York and the Bay Area: thank you for this immense siblinghood, for teaching me that a home is a thing to be made, not to be lost or found. Thank you for reminding me of the fact of my own hands. Thank you for being the funniest people on the planet, and for knowing exactly how to make me cry. I am proud to be yours and to know that my name lives among your names.
Aris Theotokatos
SAFIA ELHILLO is the author of the poetry collection The January Children, which received the the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and a 2018 Arab American Book Award.
Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, she holds an MFA from The New School, a Cave Canem Fellowship, and a 2018 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and listed in Forbes Africa's 2018 “30 Under 30.” She is a 2019-2021 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
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