For anyone who’s ever grown up,
for anyone who’s ever had to grow up;
and for Fofo and for Monteha and
for all my sisters and for my brothers,
and for my mother three times
and then my father.
contents
The Girl with Ribbons in Her Hair
Sometimes God Answers
The Life of a Refugee Is Counted in Moments
Stand Up to Allah
We Never Hire Gravediggers
Index
the girl with
ribbons in her hair
People Like Us
Memories of my childhood live
between the rings of sand around my ankles
and the desert heat in my lungs.
I still believe that nothing washes
worry from tired skin better than the Nile
and my grandma’s hands.
Every day I go to school
with the weight of dead neighbors
on my shoulders.
The first time I saw bomb smoke,
it didn’t wind and billow like the heat
from our kitchen hearth.
It forced itself on the Darfur sky,
smothering the sun
with tears that it stole
from our bodies.
The worst thing about genocide
isn’t the murder, the politics, the hunger,
the government-paid soldiers
that chase you across borders
and into camps.
It’s the silence.
For three months, they closed the schools down
because people like us are an eyesore.
The first month, we took it.
The second, we waited.
The third month, we met underneath the date palm trees,
drinking up every second our teachers gave us,
turning fruit pits into fractions.
On the last day, they came with a message
Put them in their place.
We didn’t stand a chance.
Flesh was never meant to dance
with silver bullets.
So we prayed for the sun to come
and melt daggers from our backs.
Lifted our voices up to God
until the clouds were spent for weeping
and the sand beneath our toes
echoed with the song of every soul
that ever walked before us.
I hid underneath the bed that day
with four other people.
Twelve years later and I can’t help but wonder
where my cousins hid when the soldiers
torched the houses,
threw the bodies
in the wells.
If the weapons didn’t get you,
the poison would.
Sometimes, they didn’t want to use bullets
because it would cost them more than we did.
I’ve seen sixteen ways to stop a heart.
When you build nations on someone’s bones
what sense does it make to break them?
In one day, my mother choked on rifle smoke,
my father washed the blood from his face,
my uncles carried half the bodies
to the hospital,
the rest to the grave.
We watched.
For every funeral we planned
there were sixty we couldn’t.
Half the sand in the Sahara
tastes a lot like powdered bone.
When the soldiers came,
our blood on their ankles,
I remember their laces,
scarlet footprints on the floor.
I remember waking to the sound
of hushed voices in the night
etched with the kind of sorrow
that turns even the loudest dreams
to ash.
Our parents came home with broken collarbones
and the taste of fear carved
into their skin.
It was impossible to believe in anything.
Fear is the coldest thing in the desert,
and it burns you—
bows you down to half your height
and owns you.
And no one hears you,
because what could grow
in the desert
anyway?
August
Remorse is my grandmother’s pear tree,
me bent over a tin pail washing dishes
in the sun of our final moments.
The water drawn from a drying well
by a niece I did not know.
The porcelain scraping sand
against the pail, eroding
like my family.
Like the strained conversation
between my mother sitting across
from the woman she hadn’t seen
in five years—
Me, the daughter she hadn’t seen in one.
Sisters’ Entrance
Ms. Amal tried to teach us about love
in Sunday school.
She said:
God is a poet.
He opened up the sky,
spilled His word across our skin,
and called it revelation.
This aging giant, with
a soft spot for affection, made
you and me and a soul mate for every one of us
as long as we wait.
We couldn’t.
Restless hands clasped under classroom tables.
Obsidian eyes locked across prayer aisles
as we slowly opened our minds to
the gravity of one another.
Passion is a paradox in the house of God;
a weightless anchoring that draws you
closer to your Creator and
makes you fear the heart he gave you.
You confuse enchantment with doubt,
desire with insubordination,
stranger to the weight of it all.
That’s when they started separating us:
girls’ side, boys’ side
and then by age,
they introduced us to the Sisters’ Entrance.
Sesame Candy
Remember the summer we planted arugula
in the sidewalk garden
the same year the boys covered their heads in ash
the same year we didn’t know anyone new
the same year grandpa called all of us wicked?
I go back there sometimes, next to the dogwood tree
and see the place where our garden used to grow
the magnolia, the figs
I take the seeds home with me
I keep them in a desk drawer
waiting for a drier year,
or a rainy one, or a reason
I keep hoping that I’ll turn away
and look back and see those girls playing again,
the ones we used to be before the war.
Afternoon Naps in the House of God
I lay my head on cushions
so clean
they smell like piety,
back propped against a wall
so firm
it sticks out
like doubt.
Loose Threads
Our teacher’s cousin planned
her wedding for the week after Ramadan.
We filled the hall with decorations,
sequins spilling from the closet
in the corner.
Our veils unfurled.
Hooded sisters opening their pages
to one another.
A quick break to pray Maghreb
a whole room full of laughs.
Our belly dance shoes at the door
lest the rugs start to bruise
from our footsteps.
Shoulder to shoulder,
wrist to wrist,
we bore all.
That’s the secret to the sisters’ side:
no drama, no apologies
no worries, no reservations,
no sleeves.
Euphoria at Community Prayer
Belief is not transferable,
but, not unlike guilt, it burns brightly
by association.
#MuslimParents
Layla and Ahmed had
their first kiss in
the basement of the mosque
where we keep the
extra prayer rugs.
The Imam caught them—
tricked them into thinking
they were married.
Layla’s parents laughed
all the way home,
said, Relax, you’re seven.
Ahmed’s parents
took away his iPhone.
The Imam on Charity
I counted three Maseratis,
two Ferraris, and
a Lamborghini
in the parking lot.
Reach into your pockets
and
cough up some piety.
One-Drop Well
The girl with ribbons in her hair has
ribbons on the inside of her wrist
I saw her losing hope today.
They say if you hold love in your heart
And not in your hand
You’ll be free to break the fall
I tell her, I don’t fall
I dive
Headfirst
Into a patchwork pavement
The gravel in my teeth a testament
That these parts of me were salvaged
from a story much older than myself—
from the first small boy
who grew up to be
my father’s father,
from the first young girl
who didn’t give in to the wish
to rest completely
from my grandfather
who didn’t give up the mountain
from the aunt who raised her sister’s children
when my grandmother couldn’t
from the tears that fell
when they broke the rock
to dig the well
the water’s song
the bedrock’s gift
the one-man road my father dug
At a funeral, my great-aunt grabs my arm.
I don’t know her. It hurts her more than the son who died—
My uncle, Ocean—his sister says
the sea has dried for her.
I broke myself 500 times
before the pieces started making sense.
From the bloodied mayhem
I make new
me, who I want to be, who I am.
Three sisters who contradict each other
and yet don’t exist without
the other.
I dig again
to reclaim the things lay buried there
the hopes I shed after every tumble
the elbow I grazed when I was three
the boy I don’t love anymore
the family I still do.
sometimes God answers
The Talk
I asked my mother
where babies come from.
She said:
“When two parents want
a baby
they do . . . a
special prayer.
If God wants them to
have a baby,
they do.
If not,
they do the prayer again
and again
and again.
Sometimes God answers.
Sometimes He doesn’t.”
Sustenance
The word of God
ringing above
competes with
dinner plans and
neighborly
gossip.
The
Holy Spirit
sounds
so
human
in this room.
Year-Round
Babies cry
on the women’s side,
fists firm, eyes shut, bodies screaming.
Frail voices
extend the reach of one another.
Disrupt the call to prayer.
We take them to their fathers.
Babies cry on the men’s side too.
The Bride
I met her on her wedding day,
walked up to her, and smiled.
No one ever talks to the bride.
I thought it might be interesting
to try something new.
Break tradition.
Henna patterns wrapped
around her wrists, climbed
up her arms,
spreading blossoms on tender flesh.
Her lips were a wilted crimson,
tilted ever so slightly to the side.
The perfect almost smile.
The first thing her mother taught her
was to wipe the tears
before the blood dries.
Shredded knees heal, but shame
never fades away. Don’t climb trees
or ride bikes, that’s how little girls
lose their virginity.
She sat on a porcelain throne,
beads and bows holding
plastic flowers to the armrests.
are you alright? I asked
I shouldn’t cry she said,
fingers catching tired tears.
it’s fine to cry, you’ll be happy later.
I shouldn’t cry
how long have you known him?
I don’t.
She was 17 years old,
just graduated high school.
Her parents sent her to college
because an educated girl
can earn a bigger dowry,
but this mister didn’t mind a country girl.
He grew up with her father.
Didn’t need an intellectual,
just someone who could feed the kids
while he raised them.
She was a mail-order bride
and her father licked the stamp.
I cried.
How many weddings have I been to?
She just got off the plane
twelve hours ago, and they already
started dressing her.
No time to take measurements
so they pinned satin to her skin,
tucked her in to the time-tested wire frame
our ancestors welded.
If you put a girl in a steel corset
you’ll never have to hear her scream.
She was gorgeous.
You could put anyone in her dress
and it wouldn’t make a difference.
We were guests of the groom
this was his wedding.
No one knew her name.
She only spoke Arabic.
No one knew her name.
And she danced until the tears came.
The middle-aged used-to-be brides
explained it away.
She remembered her mother
they said.
Brides always cry when they remember
their mothers.
She’ll have her fifth child by thirty.
My parents protected me
from all the broken men
and their flesh-eating fingers.
Said one day I’d find someone who
can cook as well as my dad
and is almost as smart as my mom,
who’d hold me so close that I could
breathe in their memories.
When I told my parents about the bride
and all we could do was hold her hand,
it killed me.
Tonight he’ll crush the henna blossoms
on her wrists with the same hands the man
next door threw at his wife last Thursday,
the same fists that taught a daughter
to keep her mouth shut.
He’ll flatten the ridges of her spine
and she’ll hold her tongue.
Bite the screams as they come.
Wipe the tears before the blood dries.
No one ever talks to the bride.
The Things She Told Me
I asked my mother to lend me her strength.
She proceeded to lift an entire planet
from her back.
A pearl necklace, her wedding dress,
rubber gloves from the kitchen sink,
the shoes she wore in elementary school,
her diploma, two fistfuls of hope
and a tattered legacy of fear,
the kiss from the boy next door,
her father’s walking stick,
two pence for the market,
a basket full of the finest okra,
an envelope of desert sand,
three safety pins,
one pair of sturdy khaki pants—
good for work but not for raising children—
Sisters' Entrance Page 1