In Her Feminine Sign Read online

  The street vendor offers tourists

  necklaces with divided hearts,

  seashells to murmur the sea’s secrets in your ear,

  squishy balls to make you feel better,

  maps of homelands you fold

  in your pocket as you go on your way.

  20

  I am haunted by the melody

  of a forgotten song

  sung while two hands

  tied my shoelaces into a ribbon

  and waved me goodbye to school.

  21

  If I could photocopy

  the moment we met

  I would find it full

  of all the days and nights.

  22

  It won’t forget the faraway child,

  that city whose door stayed open

  for passersby, tourists, and invaders.

  23

  The moon is going to the other

  side of the world

  to call my loved ones.

  24

  The seasons change

  colors and you come and go.

  What color is your departure?

  T/here

  What We Carry to Mars

  This new tablet you carry contains text and images of what’s remembered from Earth. You saved your life in the cloud, and now you are traveling with it to Mars.

  You can’t open a window on the way, to take a look at Mother Earth, not even a last look. Like any other mother, she will not stop spinning around the sun, though her residents never really feel her movement.

  Mothers are circles with cracks. As Leonard Cohen said, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

  Save that in the “Words as Vitamins for the Soul” file.

  It doesn’t matter if you forget something; you may simply go to the cloud and download your memories. Sometimes you smile. I know, sometimes you want to forget.

  We are all refugees. We move on, feeling that we’ve left something behind.

  You don’t exactly know what you miss.

  “Faraway” is a relative word. The theory of place we’ve been discussing for a lifetime will have another meaning over there.

  Time will not be the same either. “I see you in a year of light” means “See you later.”

  The hour will have no minutes. There will be just dust in a tube, and we can flip the tube over to see when we can return, just like this.

  How many departures can you put up with?

  “Are we safe there?” you wonder.

  Are we safe here? Forget safety.

  Here you have plants and no time to water them.

  There you have time and no plants to water.

  Here Earth has gravity so you don’t fly, and at the end you return to Mother Earth.

  The Sumerians said “returning to the mother” when they meant “freedom.” See my poem “Ama-ar-gi” for further possibilities.

  On Mars, where do they bury the dead?

  There is less gravity there and thus enough to fly.

  When you fly, cages become the last expectation.

  T/here simple warmth, which is the difference between “living” and “alive.”

  Mars looks like a half-baked cake.

  No god yet to punish the sinners or console the sad ones.

  The new planet is almost empty, but the word “empty” is relative too. The sky looks “empty” but it’s stuffed with stories we invented for the angels and devils. Our grandmothers, too, used to stuff our pillows with feathers and stories they had invented for us.

  You are not sure where you should start from. So much war and so much love. You pack it all up and parachute to the new place like any immigrant with dreams and chimeras and dying stars.

  A free dandelion, you are carried away in the wind, while in the background you hear “Songs from the Time of Earth” from someone’s tablet. Is it nostalgia or accident? You are not sure.

  Ama-ar-gi

  Scattered, like us, the Sumerian letters.

  “Freedom” is inscribed

  Ama-ar-gi, meaning

  “returning to the mother.”

  This, then, is how the map grew borders.

  The birds don’t know it yet, leaving

  their droppings wherever they want.

  Their songs, like exiles, might pass by

  anywhere. There are no borders

  in paradise, neither spoils nor victors.

  Paradise is Ama-ar-gi,

  no victors at all.

  There are no borders in hell,

  no losses no demons.

  Hell is Ama-ar-gi,

  no demons at all.

  Ama-ar-gi might be a moon

  that follows us home, a shadow

  that stumbles on its true self,

  a bead from a bracelet,

  a secret a tree keeps for centuries.

  Maybe it’s what crowds the prisoner’s heart,

  or what shines around the pebbles

  mixed with drops of water

  among the rocks, what seeps out

  from the dead into our dreams.

  Maybe it’s a flower thrown into the air

  and hangs there alone,

  a flower that will live and die without us.

  Ama-ar-gi—

  that’s how we return to the mother,

  strangers from strangers.

  And so like all of you,

  we breathe Ama-ar-gi

  and before we shed our first tears

  Ama-ar-gi is what we weep.

  That Place

  I want that place

  and you in it as always:

  how you remember my flower

  kept in the refrigerator.

  I want that place

  and I in it as always:

  the candy moon we put

  under our pillows

  to dream of those who will love

  us tomorrow.

  I know the trees

  in your garden and how they grow

  quietly like grandmothers,

  and how the gravity pulls light

  into your hands.

  Black and White

  In chess,

  white plays first

  and black responds.

  When a challenge happens,

  killing offers the easiest solution.

  The two players alternate

  tossing wooden bodies into the box.

  The pawns are the first to go.

  A tie ends it:

  everybody died,

  except the black king and the white king,

  separated by a borderline

  and a memory of ruined castles.

  The two kings are afraid

  of losing one another.

  The problem is how to meet

  without a checkmate.

  Love offers the hardest solution.

  The rules of the game dictate

  that sharing a square

  equals death for one

  and keeping their distance

  means death for them both.

  To leave the board

  for a life the color

  of water, a play

  no less risky

  than running after a bubble:

  you lose it once you touch it.

  The War in Colors

  The digital map on the wall

  displays American wars

  in colors:

  Iraq in purple

  Syria in yellow

  Kuwait in blue

  Afghanistan in red

  Vietnam in green.

  The war


  on the map

  is beautiful.

  N ن

  The “N” on the doors,

  an exodus

  from houses:

  no keys

  no compass

  no words.

  Wide clothes

  cover tightened souls.

  Lights tremble

  in the lanterns.

  How heavy the carriage is!

  It carries the skies

  on their shoulders,

  along with their sorrows,

  the phantoms of those

  taken aside,

  and the last looks.

  It carries the newborn

  startled from the shake

  of the wheels.

  It carries a schoolbag

  with the colorful wars

  in a history book,

  the atlas made of what is

  remembered,

  the math book and its questions

  multiplying like the weight

  of the carriage.

  The moon doesn’t reflect

  what is carried

  or left behind.

  Like them, it’s waning.

  The “N” on the doors

  is a rainbow

  drained of color

  and the dot above

  it is a lonely god.

  Tomorrow the Earth will turn

  with their fields,

  with early fallen leaves

  as if shaken off by the trees.

  The Earth will turn

  with their shops full of timepieces,

  antiques, and suitcases;

  the dust will fall off

  their ancient stuff,

  but something they can’t fix

  will land on their chests

  like a sunset.

  Tomorrow they will gather

  what remains:

  mud stuck on their shoes,

  kite sticks,

  safety pins, and buttons,

  a distant star in the dark.

  Tomorrow they will

  make a country

  from the straw

  and from whatever else remains.

  The “N”

  is a lap

  in the mountain.

  Every grain a bell

  relentlessly ringing.

  Where will the ringing carry them?

  How many will survive

  to return someday

  and see the pictures

  of the dead on the walls?

  How many girls will outgrow

  their dresses

  while on the road?

  Countries grow smaller

  behind the backs

  of the departing ones.

  The “N”

  and the pen

  and the footsteps

  and the late sun

  and their crumpled shadows

  on the walls of the cave.

  Sisyphus, exhausted,

  left his rock for us,

  and when my turn came

  I paused

  to ask about my father.

  Did he emerge from the whale?

  Did he leave his bed when he was sick?

  Did he die from thirst?

  The rock opened its mouth:

  I didn’t see your father

  for twenty years . . . and who are you?

  I am the child who ran

  to seek the ones who hid—

  she screamed for them to come out

  or else she would quit the game.

  I am the stranger who forgot

  to put out the fire

  and now, having returned

  to collect the scattered feathers

  in the ash, suddenly sees

  her own wrinkles in the map.

  I am the village on the hillside.

  They left my doors open

  and left. They didn’t

  tie their shoelaces.

  No doughs rise in the ovens

  this evening.

  No

  one

  is here

  under

  the sun.

  Nuun

  Nuuna

  Nye

  Nye for little Mariam.

  She made sandals

  from tree leaves

  to wear

  in the caravan.

  Nye for Khudayda.

  He didn’t bury his family.

  Frozen and tearful—a half-melted glacier

  and their photos in his hands.

  Nye for the child.

  They don’t know his name

  or where his parents are.

  His quiet gaze, a flash

  of lightning in the eyelids.

  Nye for the mother.

  Which child to save first?

  She sang

  the same lullaby

  to each of them.

  Nye for our people.

  They fell before

  their fruits could fall,

  and the grass grows

  around their sleep

  without memory

  as it grows

  elsewhere.

  On the Edge of a Mass Grave

  He sleeps on his side,

  as usual, except his bones

  are visible—

  you can even count them.

  Surrounded by friends,

  as usual, except they’re dead.

  He’s completely calm

  and doesn’t worry about his wounds.

  The sun slips through the clouds

  above the mass grave

  as usual, except today

  it brightens death.

  They are close to each other

  like conjoined trees

  on which they would rest their backs

  except now they have no words.

  The Others

  We are not dead,

  and those are not our ghosts.

  We don’t know where they came from,

  or where they are going.

  Their shadows are as changeable

  as the moon’s phases

  and are not our shapes.

  Their jinns floating over the waters

  are not our wars.

  Their hollows are not our cracks

  on the walls. In our sleep,

  they melt into one gesture.

  What do they want to say?

  And why—every night,

  in view of the stars—do they dig

  a hole for someone whose turn has come?

  They call on us,

  and we are in the middle of the river.

  They carry their perforated jars.

  We count the holes,

  and they count our memories.

  To catch their fears

  we set fires. To imitate us

  they light up our darkness.

  We will abandon them, we say,

  and they will slip away like a passing idea,

  beam of light

  that doesn’t know where to fall.

  We pretend it’s not dry yet,

  the life we left

  on the string,

  and go and look for their voices.

  Like them we hide.

  Between one dream and another,

  we hear their wooden steps.

  We call on them

  and they are in the middle

  of the river.

  Drawing

  She called him “Riv
er”

  and herself “Fish.”

  One day she sent him

  a drawing of a fish on land

  and a river with an “X” across it.

  He shriveled up quickly

  at this separation, worrying

  if she meant

  he was dead to her, or if

  she meant she was dead

  without him.

  Flamingo

  I read that flamingoes

  have migrated back to Iraq

  after a twenty-year absence,

  and I bend my head,

  imitating the perfect,

  half-hearted Valentine

  shape they make in pairs.

  I wait for you

  at the lake’s edge

  standing on one leg.

  The moon I swallow

  when I open my beak

  and fly home to you

  will be full.

  Rotation

  I don’t feel the rotation of the Earth,

  not even when I see

  the cities moving backward

  through the train’s window,

  one by one.

  Not even when I return

  each time to the same place

  where birds pick up the mornings

  with their beaks and spread them away

  as new circles of light.

  Not even when I sleep

  and see you alive in my dream

  and then wake knowing the dead

  didn’t rise yet from their death.

  Not even when I find myself

  saying the same thing over and over

  as if those words were oars

  cutting through a river

  we cross in turns

  with our untold stories

  to that same shore, in silence.

  Notes

  p. 11The Stranger in Her Feminine Sign: In Arabic, there’s a feminine symbol (a circle with two dots above it that appears at the end of the word) used to transform a masculine word into a feminine one.

  p. 13Song Inside a Fossil: In 2016, archaeologists in Taiwan uncovered the ancient remains of a young mother cradling an infant child in a 4,800-year-old embrace.

  p. 17Nisaba: The Sumerian goddess of writing.

  p. 23Three Women: This poem was written in 2013, after the story broke about a man who had imprisoned three women in his basement in Cleveland, Ohio for nearly a decade, using them as sex slaves.

  p. 29Tablets: The first section of “Tablets”—my attempt to write Iraqi haiku—can be found in The Iraqi Nights. The Sumerian clay tablets come down to us as the earliest recorded communication in history. I tried to imitate those ancient symbols with the drawings that accompany the poems.