Home Is Not a Country: Part 1

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

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

& 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

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

through the bathroom door i hear haitham singing loudly
in the shower stretching each note with a flourish

the mantel above the television
is crowded with photographs

the way she coaxes a smile
from my mother & clears the shadow from her face

& my mother mourning my unkemptness sometimes
she won't even brush her hair

her cloying voice remember when we were girls?
the daughters we imagined we'd have?

the way she wrinkles
her nose whenever she enters our apartment her own
apartment large & expensive but filled with awful gaudy
objects

something meaty & unfamiliar
wafting its smells from the stove

but she’s laughing

trying & failing to catch her breath before another peal escapes

i think if he’d lived my father would have been
a famous singer crooning & preening in a shiny suit

tonight haitham does the funniest impression
of abdel halim hafez pitches his voice as deep
as it will go & croons all my favorite songs
on tape so beautiful that they make me want to cry

with my mother unwidowed & smiling with all
her teeth twirled in the living room
dress billowing over her calves

what i loved most was to drape one
after another over my face breathe in
her smell of sandalwood & flowers & look out
into the world in its new colors the sky
made purple by the pink chiffon made green
by the yellow one the whole apartment
becoming a painting

there’s something weird about me my body filled
with an unfamiliar current my hands flitting in
& out of focus even when i blink & look again

i lift the left one out of the bathwater to study in the light
translucent as my mother’s best chiffon i try to touch
the bathtub & both hands pass through the ceramic

i pass haitham & his friends in the hall
& without his usual wave & smile he becomes
another brick in the impenetrable wall of boys
who don’t see me

new broadness of his shoulders
that makes him look despite his short stature
like he takes up all the space in the room

i know something happened on the news again
because my mother has stopped wearing her scarf
to work & instead tucks each strand of her hair
into a knit hat the nape of her neck new
& tender in the light

i raise my arms to cover my face i cower & still
they move in closer my blood feels hot
& swirls messily through my body
i press my eyes shut & will myself to vanish

he snarls in pain i look up
& i am outside the circle standing upright & opaque
blood packed underneath my nails

one by one the other mothers file in painted
& hairsprayed & perfumed clicking in their heeled
shoes & bustling into the principal’s office

their indignation rings out into the hall
no way would my son varsity honor roll
his permanent record my son my son

around sunset mama fatheya comes to get me
i tell the office she is my grandmother
& does not speak any english they look into
her wizened face & find its matching brown
in mine & let her take me home

before i can slink off to my room
i hear her voice a new sharpness
nima come here tell me
what happened

maybe i’m
all wrong not because i’ve come to the wrong
country maybe any country on this side
of the membrane between worlds isn’t mine

& as if to confirm my body starts its new & strange hum
as both my legs go abstract as static

i check for a reflection in the dark surface
of the dormant television & only the slightest outline
of a girl looks back

i miss her voice naming me her small
& cool hands her unlined girl-face
her rare & lilting laugh

i'm sorry for reminding you
of my father for reminding you of what you lost
i'm sorry you made this life
for me instead of the bright & bountiful one
you could have tried to make for only
yourself

yasmeen is the daughter my mother
deserves bright spot in her weary day
sprig of jasmine in her small life
something to be proud of at last