The Maghrebi among the Slums
back
As the smell of that harsh Rwandan coffee
covers the land of my (and your) ancestors nation.
Speaking in that odd tongue,
at times Arabic, others Italian,
I watched my mother watch Al Jazeera,
and my father tsked as they spoke of
the bombardment of Benghazi.
Shall I run and hide?
When they bring out the couscous,
and reveal myself when the sfenj comes back?
The ultimate dream achieved as I walk
to the school full of brown bodies,
and a disgrace caused when I come back
with questions of what it means to be in God's skin.
Will our moral arcs point towards righteousness,
as our prayer rugs point towards Mecca?
The skin of thousands of martyrs flayed across
our pocket Baghdads, adorned with palm trees of hope!
Hours spent as a child running my fingers across
the braids of that mat as the Friday Khutbah runs on,
and he speaks of a Jabal Akhdar at the end of every sidewalk.
When the Messenger of Light comes,
I’m certain that none will even realize.
Rather, he will be invited onto our mats,
served our tea and told stories of before this prime minister
and that khalifah. Carried by the elbow,
through the slums where merchants will sell anything, for any price.
Should I point out to him where Madame Amelie lives,
and her husband who always dreamed of European life?
(He fasts when he can, and hits the wall of his kids when he remembers)
I will lead you and every other story I was taught by heart,
to the alleyway where I remembered Saif ben Salah
being shot and left for a week until his mother found him,
threw him over her breast, and drank the blood from his wound.
I will lead you towards there, and the Buraq will be waiting.
Surrounded by the memories of Saif ben Salah and Madame Amelie and Halima who
was raped in a pool of the blood of her kin and Abdirahman
who had nothing bad happen to him but stopped being
a kid at the creek acting out the deaths of the Italians far too early
Where will the Buraq take you, you ask?
Indeed, it will fly you over all of Tripoli,
take you to Florence (though you must cover your eyes
when we come across David), cry above Casablanca,
and we will ask you of what you think of the far blown
Maghrebi boy dreams of white thighed, blonde haired,
and blue eyed girls in Paris, Cannes, Naples, Lisbon,
and Amsterdam - those dreams that exploded onto
the trash behind a poor Monsieur's grocery.
The mother of the boy who died in the Gulf War,
(not war, rather sickness. She never found out what it was.
No syntax to hold the sick; there were flies above him,
and he was vomiting while the other men fought
she did not get to see him in the coffin.)
she will offer you some Brazilian coffee,
but you have a place to be within Venice.
Please, remember to pray for her.
An entire world of luxury and the finest
Oriental silk will be placed in front of you,
with the prostitutes of Alexandria beckoning
towards you with their hands colored with grief
from the last client who cried in her shoulder.
This universe will be hands-up at your mercy,
on the back of your Buraq we have given to you,
and before you can choose where to land,
we will drop you into the slum
as a child
covered in cowshit
in the hands of a
midwife who will never be known.