WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
I’ve never really known how to answer that.
Do I like falafel and hummus enough to be considered one of you? I swear I can keep in line with the dabke only a few stumbles here and there. I can hold a conversation with only the occasional glance towards a word just out of my reach.
But, I was never quite modest enough. I never quite wore enough. My hair was never quite covered enough. I was never quite Syrian enough. My urges considered unnatural with repercussions I’m too scared to think of. Watching in horror as male suitors inspected my cousin’s burn scars as though she were livestock. Deciding whether the meat was good enough to buy.
I decided I didn’t even want to be enough.
Across the Mediterranean Sea.
Is where I watched my mother being called a “Paki” as I clung to monkey bars. Too young to understand it didn’t matter we’d never even been to Pakistan.
It’s where my friend had told me my arms were too hairy. My eyebrows too bushy. My skin a slight shade too dark. Being asked if I had a bomb in my bag. Being asked if I had a bomb in my hijab. Being asked if I ride a camel. Being asked if I live in a tent.
Being taken aside in an airport queue asked question after question after question after question after question after question.
Is this where I belong?
My mother constantly reminding me we are not one of “them”.
If not here, not there, then where??
Published
The Queer & Feminist Poetry Anthology
https://unwantedwords.com/out-now-queer-feminist-poetry-anthology/
I’VE BEEN RUNNING
Ever since I remember, I’ve been running, the iron hand of my father never missing it’s mark, I’ve been running
The words hurled at me from a culture I never asked for, I’ve been running
Veiling me in the fabric of a rhetoric that insists my existence is a mistake I’ve been running
They wanted to cover me from head to toe when I never asked to be covered I’ve been running
At eighteen I walked out of our home and never went back I’ve been running
Into the arms of lovers again and again, lonely nights spent in rib cages that didn’t belong to me So I started running,
Towards myself, somewhere along the way I found a pack of wolves, queer, savage, soft
They protected me like an injured pup, circling until I built my own home, bone by bone
Now maybe I’ll stop running
I’M SO GLAD I MET YOU
While the world was still exciting and new for you, before the weight of work, the weight of a house, the weight of security creeping its head around the corner
When we could just sleep on unknown mattresses, on unknown mezzanines, in unknown houses, entangled in one another
Concerned only with shaving love hearts into our pubic hair and fucking each other within the crevices of a church just within the reach of prying eyes. Hand in hand we traipsed the streets power and youth coursing through our veins
I hope our hands still fit together, when we are older and slightly jaded, with green and orange hair. Walking the streets like we still own them, full of wrinkles burrowed deep within our smiling skin
After all those years, still glad to have met you
I GREW UP IN WALLS OF SCREAMS AND FURY
Silent glances and words unspoken, where secrets were currency and where hands and fists were the language we learned
Sometimes I feel I’m full of so much rage I don’t know what to do with it, I let it flow out of my pens and pencils and bleed across the pages
Knowing that untamed anger can have a leash, knowing that the cycle ends with me, knowing that a cycle does not have to be a cycle
But it takes both words and words unspoken, to rewrite a future
To be performed for my therapist
Untitled
I have the voice of a coloniser
I know
When I speak in my mothers mother tongue and say
حبيبي عيوني اقعدي جنبي
بحكيلك قصة وانت بتحكي لي قصة
انت متلي وانا متلك
They know I am not
I am both the coloniser and the colonised A messy fraction of a third culture Smokes and mirrors carrying both privilege and pain But I am more than a voice I am more than the memories left upon this body,
I am cute
I’m humble and I’m arrogant
I’m a messy fraction of a human
Performed at
Amsterdam Museum Nacht - Fashion For Good Museum
The 2nd Queer & Feminist Poetry Awards
https://unwantedwords.com/work/untitled/
A LOVE LETTER TO MY FAMILY
Fuck you
I’m tired of using soft words to sooth your tender ears
Fuck you
I’m tired of putting things in a neat little box for you to understand
Fuck you
For making me shape shift and change into a mailable unrecognizable thing until you find me palatable
Fuck you
For every time you say cover your hair, Take your that thing out of your nose, have some modesty
Fuck you
For everytime your existence is celebrated with cries of joy from our Syrian aunts, uncles, while I’m erased
Fuck you
For telling me to be understanding and cut them slack when my bitterness has no place to turn
Fuck you
They say blood is thicker than water, yet with a thousand small cuts you keep drawing blood from my body until there is nothing left
Fuck you
For trying to contain my rage and projecting your narrative onto me
Fuck you
Everytime you tell me it could have been worse, or I’m entering their space, or I need to accept it and move on
Fuck you
My acceptance runs on my time not yours
Fuck you
Let me fucking feel whatever the fuck I feel
Fuck you
For having to make me write these little words into a little poem because my little feelings have nowhere to go
Fuck you
I will not be erased
Fuck you
And fuck me
Because I love you and hate you all at once
performed at
Museum Nacht - Fashion For Good Museum
The 2nd Queer & Feminist Poetry Awards