The Airport
once when i was small we packed a shared suitcase
of bright cotton floral prints & something yellow
& silken i’d never seen my mother wear
& for the trip across the country she wore perfume
& her best red beaded scarf & we clattered
into the terminal my mother collecting all the light
a wedding on another coast its promises
of sunlight & gold & her scattered schoolmates
& cousins & faraway friends all crowded
into a rented hall making it with color
& incense & song our country
& it all shone in my mother’s face
we approached the counter to check in the family
ahead of ours handed their boarding passes with a grin
before the agent turned to us & his smile clicked shut
said check-in is closed & no
there is nothing he can do
& no there is no manager to call & please can we leave
this counter is now closed
my mother’s faltering voice the soft music in her english
her welling eyes her wilting face her beaded scarf
& all she said was please please i have a ticket
& i’d never seen her so small english fleeing her mouth
& leaving her faltering frozen reaching for words
that would not come dabbing at her eyes
with the scarf its red so bright so festive
like it was mocking us
& all i could do was reach for the suitcase with one hand
her limp arm with the other & wheel us to the exit
& in our slow retreat i heard the last snatches
of that man’s joke his colleague’s barking laugh
no way we’re letting
mohammed so-and-so near the plane
& that’s why we don’t go anywhere anymore
Mama
my mother is so often sad so often tired & wants mostly
to sit quietly in front of the television where we watch
turkish soap operas dubbed over in arabic
their sweeping landscapes & enormous romances
until she falls asleep
chin pointed into her chest & glasses askew
on bright days she plays music pitches her voice high
& sings along to all the ones we love abdel halim
& wardi & fairouz sayed khalifa & oum kalthoum
gisma’s open throaty voice & frantic percussion
to which mama claps along tries sometimes to teach me
the dances the body formed like a pigeon’s
the chest arced proudly upward head twisting helixes
against the neck in a surprise to no one i cannot dance
but love to watch her love that she tries anyway
to teach me
& sometimes rarely by some magic the movement
will click fluently into my body & she’ll ululate & clap
while i twist my head in time to the song mama’s voice
celebratory & trilling my nima my graceful girl
Haitham
is smaller than me three weeks younger & always
a little disheveled always dressed in something that
someone else wore first & laughs
the most enormous sound
haitham passes me a drawing during arabic class
full-color cartoon on the back of a worksheet
of our horrible teacher spit flying from his
large mouth with a speech bubble that reads
WE ARE NOT AMERRICANS! YOU SPEAK
ZE ARRABIC! eyes bulging & his bald patch
glistening in the light
i press my fist over my mouth to keep the laugh inside
& it builds until i think my eyeballs might burst
until the sound threatens to come pouring from my
ears from my nose until my face is wet
with tears
& haitham swipes the drawing crumples it
into his notebook right as the teacher turns
& thunders over spits a little while asking
what on earth (the only way teachers are allowed
to say the hell) what on earth is wrong with me
i only manage to choke out allergies
& haitham from the row behind offers me
a tissue with a grin
Pyramids
once in arabic class excited that the new girl’s name
luul reminded me of the song i love the pearl necklace
i sang a little of it when she introduced herself
& watched her smile falter confused before she finally
excused herself & by the end of the day everyone
was giggling nima loves old people’s music pass it on
so even here among my so-called people i do not fit
here where the hierarchy puts those who have successfully
americanized at the top i’ve marked myself by caring
about the old world & now i hover somewhere
at the bottom of the pyramid (while our arabic teacher drones about ancient times & the little-known fact
that our country has 255 pyramids remaining today)
the bottom of the pyramid with those recently arrived
dusty-shoed & heavy-tongued & though i’m born here
though my love of the old songs & old photos
doesn’t translate to my spelling my handwriting
my arabic pronunciation or grammar or history
or memorization of the qur’an i recognize
in their widened eyes that feeling that shock
of being here instead of there
Haitham
lives in my building which isn’t actually surprising
since it seems everyone from our country immigrated
to this same block of crowded apartments
it’s saturday morning & he’s ringing the doorbell
frantic & falls inside when i answer
sweaty & rumpled & still in his house shoes coughing
with a little joke in his eye
his grandmother opening his t-shirt drawer to put away
the laundry found his secret pack of cigarettes which
he doesn’t even really smoke which he tried to explain
away while dodging the slippers aimed at his head
who knew mama fatheya was so athletic
everything always so funny to him
she chased him out with cries of
DISKUSTING! DISKUSTING! & where else
was he going to go
my mother hasn’t left yet for work & makes us tea
boiled in milk poured into mismatched mugs
& hands us packs of captain majid cookies she gets
from the bigala that haitham & i call ethnic wal-mart
where we buy everything from bleeding legs of lamb
to patterned pillow covers & cassettes
covered in a layer of dust
she never seems old enough to be anyone’s mother
so pretty & unlined & smelling always of flowers
she clears the cups & wipes the crumbs from the table
& our faces in quick movements pins her scarf
around her face & leaves for work
haitham isn’t wearing shoes so we cannot go outside
we instead spend the day playing our favorite game
calling all our people’s typical names out the window
into the courtyard mohammed! fatimah! ali bedour!
to see how many strangers startle & look up
when they are called
Haitham
haitham’s grandmother once asked us suspicious
what do you two do all day? & by the middle of the list
had already turned her eyes back to the television
as haitham continued to list our every microscopic act
music videos snacks monopoly
even though half the cards are missing five-dollar tuesdays
at the movie theater after school
concan even though nima thinks i cheat
& we don’t really know the rules
& in truth i do not know what we really do
with our time together
because it’s always been like this
my every day is filled with haitham
his laughter pulling my own to join it
our nonsense jokes & riffs
& misremembered lyrics & laughing & more laughing
i see him every day & somehow still have so much to tell him
every time one of us rings the doorbell to the other’s apartment
& crosses the threshold already beginning whatever story
already unfolding whatever thought & he’s never
joined the other kids in making fun
of all my strangeness makes it feel instead
like a good thing
even when he calls me the nostalgia monster
he makes it sound like a compliment
full of affection & pure joy has never
made me feel that there is anything wrong with me at all
An Illness
through the bathroom door i hear haitham singing loudly
in the shower stretching each note with a flourish
i perch next to mama fatheya on the couch
while she watches intent
as a woman on the television pulls a glistening chicken
from the oven i am so bored & haitham
is taking his time the mantel above the television
is crowded with photographs
haitham’s mother khaltu hala younger & first arrived
her hair cut short & eyes haunted
haitham a bundle in her arms mama fatheya,
tell me about back home she glances up from
her program irritated at first & then softening
nostalgia is an illness, little one she says gently
turning back to the television but continues
ours is a culture that worships yesterday over tomorrow
but i think we are all lucky to have left yesterday
behind we are here now
dissatisfied i press on wait, you actually
like it here? & she faces me again a sadness hitched
behind her eyes here i have lost nothing i could not
afford to lose
just as haitham squawks the last notes to his song
& shuts off the shower i look at the lost country
in mama fatheya’s face & recognize it
from my own mother’s face the face of every grown-up
in our community a country i’ve never seen
outside a photograph
& i miss it too
Haitham
always laughing & pulling laughter from anyone he meets
has interests that keep him here instead of dreaming
of a lost world for a while he tried to get me
to play video games but i could not make myself care
& now i mostly sit on the plastic-covered couch
& watch him play while i daydream & when he’s done
or tired of losing he’ll put on one of the old movies
from the box under his grandmother’s bed though by now
we’ve watched them all dozens of times we each
pick a favorite character & recite all the dialogue
long since memorized & squawk off-key
to all the songs though secretly we are each belting
them out in earnest
i think that secretly he loves
this old world almost as much as i do
Khaltu Hala
haitham’s mother her hair cut close around her ears
though in the old pictures she wore it long puffed out
around her shoulders curls halfway down her back
i like her her gruffness & briskness & her short bark
of a laugh the books shelved floor to ceiling
in the little apartment each one of them hers
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
