The Airport 
once when i was small  we packed a shared suitcase
of bright cotton  floral prints  & something yellow 
& silken i’d never seen my mother wear 
& for the trip across the country she wore perfume 
& her best red beaded scarf  & we clattered 
into the terminal  my mother  collecting all the light
 
a wedding on another coast  its promises 
of sunlight & gold  & her scattered schoolmates 
& cousins & faraway friends  all crowded 
into a rented hall  making it  with color 
& incense & song  our country 
& it all shone in my mother’s face
  
we approached the counter to check in  the family 
ahead of ours handed their boarding passes with a grin 
before the agent turned to us & his smile clicked shut 
said  check-in is closed  & no 
there is nothing he can do 
& no there is no manager to call & please can we leave 
this counter is now closed
  
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 
& i’d never seen her so small  english fleeing her mouth 
& leaving her faltering  frozen  reaching for words 
that would not come  dabbing at her eyes 
with the scarf  its red so bright  so festive 
like it was mocking us
 
& all i could do was reach  for the suitcase with one hand 
her limp arm with the other  & wheel us to the exit 
& in our slow retreat i heard the last snatches 
of that man’s joke  his colleague’s barking laugh 
no way we’re letting 
mohammed so-and-so near the plane 
& that’s why we don’t go anywhere  anymore
  
Mama
 
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
 
on bright days she plays music  pitches her voice high 
& sings along to all the ones we love  abdel halim 
& wardi & fairouz  sayed khalifa & oum kalthoum 
gisma’s open throaty voice & frantic percussion 
to which mama claps along  tries sometimes to teach me 
the dances  the body formed like a pigeon’s 
the chest arced proudly upward  head twisting helixes 
against the neck  in a surprise to no one i cannot dance 
but love to watch her  love that she tries anyway 
to teach me 
& 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  & laughs 
the most enormous sound
 
haitham passes me a drawing  during arabic class 
full-color cartoon on the back of a worksheet 
of our horrible teacher  spit flying from his 
large mouth  with a speech bubble that reads 
WE ARE NOT AMERRICANS! YOU SPEAK 
ZE ARRABIC!  eyes bulging & his bald patch 
glistening in the light
 
i press my fist over my mouth to keep the laugh inside 
& it builds until i think my eyeballs might burst 
until the sound threatens to come pouring from my 
ears  from my nose  until my face is wet 
with tears
  
& haitham swipes the drawing  crumples it 
into his notebook  right as the teacher turns 
& thunders over  spits a little while asking 
what on earth  (the only way teachers are allowed 
to say the hell)  what on earth is wrong with me 
i only manage to choke out    allergies 
& haitham  from the row behind  offers me 
a tissue with a grin
 
Pyramids
 
once  in arabic class  excited that the new girl’s name 
luul  reminded me of the song i love  the pearl necklace
 
i sang a little of it when she introduced herself 
& watched her smile falter  confused  before she finally
 
excused herself  & by the end of the day everyone 
was giggling  nima loves old people’s music  pass it on
 
so even here among my so-called people i do not fit 
here where the hierarchy puts those who have successfully
  
americanized  at the top  i’ve marked myself by caring 
about the old world  & now i hover somewhere
 
at the bottom of the pyramid  (while our arabic teacher drones about ancient times  & the little-known fact
 
that our country has 255 pyramids remaining today) 
the bottom of the pyramid with those recently arrived
  
dusty-shoed & heavy-tongued  & though i’m born here 
though my love of the old songs & old photos
  
doesn’t translate to my spelling  my handwriting 
my arabic pronunciation  or grammar  or history 
or memorization of the qur’an  i recognize 
in their widened eyes  that feeling  that shock
 
of being here instead of there
 
Haitham
 
lives in my building  which isn’t actually surprising 
since it seems everyone from our country immigrated 
to this same block of crowded apartments 
 
it’s saturday morning & he’s ringing the doorbell 
frantic    & falls inside when i answer 
sweaty & rumpled & still in his house shoes  coughing
with a little joke in his eye
 
his grandmother opening his t-shirt drawer to put away 
the laundry  found his secret pack of cigarettes  which 
he doesn’t even really smoke  which he tried to explain 
away  while dodging the slippers aimed at his head 
who knew mama fatheya was so athletic 
everything always so funny to him 
she chased him out with cries of 
DISKUSTING!  DISKUSTING!  & where else 
was he going to go
 
my mother hasn’t left yet for work  & makes us tea 
boiled in milk  poured into mismatched mugs 
& hands us packs of captain majid cookies she gets 
from the bigala that haitham & i call  ethnic wal-mart 
where we buy everything  from bleeding legs of lamb 
to patterned pillow covers  & cassettes 
covered in a layer of dust
 
she never seems old enough to be anyone’s mother 
so pretty & unlined & smelling always of flowers 
she clears the cups & wipes the crumbs from the table 
& our faces in quick movements  pins her scarf 
around her face & leaves for work
 
haitham isn’t wearing shoes so we cannot go outside 
we instead spend the day playing our favorite game 
calling all our people’s typical names out the window 
into the courtyard mohammed! fatimah! ali bedour! 
to see how many strangers startle  & look up 
when they are called
 
Haitham
 
haitham’s grandmother once asked us  suspicious 
what do you two do all day?  & by the middle of the list 
had already turned her eyes back to the television 
as haitham continued to list our every microscopic act 
music videos  snacks  monopoly 
even though half the cards are missing  five-dollar tuesdays 
at the movie theater after school 
concan even though nima thinks i cheat 
& we don’t really know the rules 
& in truth i do not know what we really do 
with our time together 
because it’s always been like this 
my every day is filled with haitham 
his laughter pulling my own to join it 
our nonsense jokes & riffs 
& misremembered lyrics & laughing & more laughing 
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  already beginning whatever story 
already unfolding whatever thought  & he’s never 
joined the other kids in making fun 
of all my strangeness  makes it feel instead 
like a good thing
even when he calls me the nostalgia monster 
he makes it sound like a compliment 
full of affection & pure joy  has never 
made me feel that there is anything wrong with me at all
 
An Illness
 
through the bathroom door i hear haitham singing loudly 
in the shower  stretching each note with a flourish
 
i perch next to mama fatheya on the couch 
while she watches  intent
 
as a woman on the television pulls a glistening chicken 
from the oven  i am so bored  & haitham
 
is taking his time  the mantel above the television 
is crowded with photographs
 
haitham’s mother  khaltu hala  younger & first arrived 
her hair cut short & eyes haunted
  
haitham a bundle in her arms  mama fatheya, 
tell me about back home  she glances up from
  
her program  irritated at first & then softening 
nostalgia is an illness, little one  she says gently
  
turning back to the television  but continues 
ours is a culture that worships yesterday over tomorrow
  
but i think we are all lucky to have left yesterday 
behind  we are here now
  
dissatisfied  i press on  wait, you actually 
like it here?  & she faces me again  a sadness hitched
  
behind her eyes  here i have lost nothing i could not 
afford to lose
 
just as haitham squawks the last notes to his song 
& shuts off the shower  i look at the lost country
 
in mama fatheya’s face  & recognize it 
from my own mother’s face  the face of every grown-up
 
in our community  a country i’ve never seen 
outside a photograph
  
& i miss it too
 
Haitham
 
always laughing & pulling laughter from anyone he meets 
has interests that keep him here instead of dreaming 
of a lost world  for a while he tried to get me 
to play video games  but i could not make myself care 
& now i mostly sit on the plastic-covered couch 
& watch him play while i daydream  & when he’s done 
or tired of losing  he’ll put on one of the old movies 
from the box under his grandmother’s bed  though by now 
we’ve watched them all dozens of times  we each 
pick a favorite character & recite all the dialogue 
long since memorized  & squawk off-key 
to all the songs  though secretly we are each belting 
them out in earnest
 
i think that  secretly  he loves 
this old world almost as much as i do
 
Khaltu Hala
 
haitham’s mother  her hair cut close around her ears 
though in the old pictures she wore it long  puffed out 
around her shoulders  curls halfway down her back
 
i like her  her gruffness & briskness & her short bark 
of a laugh  the books shelved floor to ceiling 
in the little apartment  each one of them hers 
traced for years by her fingers until the ink 
began to gray  the way she coaxes a smile 
from my mother  & clears the shadow from her face 
the way she growls out every letter of my name 
in approval  how i can’t imagine her ever afraid 
though when she is home we don’t watch the old films 
or sing the old songs or ask too many questions
  
my mother never talks about it except the one time 
after khaltu hala heard me humming the song 
about the pearl necklace  &  eyes bulging 
voice hoarse  told me to leave  & go home 
knocking gently on our door hours later 
a little pearl ring passed from her hand to mine 
her embrace bright with the smell of oranges & soap 
apology muffled by my sweatshirt’s thick fabric
  
that night  my mother  voice hushed  told me 
about the officers that cut khaltu hala’s hair  the long scars 
striped down her back  the thousand things 
she will not talk about  in hopes of erasing 
that whole country  & starting again here 
brand-new  & i almost wish she hadn’t told me 
& for weeks after i did not want to listen 
to the songs  & every photograph looked sharper & ugly 
& gave off the faintest smell of copper  of blood 
& now i mostly try to forget the story  & return to loving 
the dream of home  & the pearl never leaves my finger
 
Mama
 
though the story about khaltu hala hurts  i do not 
want my mother to stop telling stories  she who
 
so rarely tells anything at all  i ask 
about my grandmother  loved flowers  about
  
my mother as a young girl  i wanted to be 
a dancer  & when i ask about my name
  
she frowns a little  squinting as she chooses 
the words  i had a whole other name picked out,
 
did you know?    but when your father died 
i don’t know  it felt like that name belonged to him 
 
& i couldn’t bear to keep it without him   so i picked 
something else  & i feel that old pang  of being
 
second-best  to that other girl  my ghost-self 
     yasmeen
 
Overheard
 
my mother has guests over & i am hiding in my room 
humming to myself & looking through my tin box 
of artifacts  the photographs again  my mother as 
a painted bride  my parents dancing  i put the pictures 
away  the cassettes  & hear my mother calling me 
to greet her guests  hello  fine thank you 
i’m almost fifteen  school’s fine 
arabic’s fine  alhamdulillah  you too 
& i duck back into hiding
 
& i hear khaltu amal with the tattooed eyebrows 
who is not actually my aunt & who always smells like ghee 
purring to my mother  she could be such a pretty girl 
& my mother mourning my unkemptness  sometimes 
she won’t even brush her hair  & i don’t know why 
she insists on wearing that sweatshirt all the time 
i have to pry it away to wash  & khaltu amal again 
her cloying voice  remember when we were girls? 
the daughters we imagined we’d have?  & i hate her 
& her pink-gray face  her still-brown neck she hasn’t 
bothered to bleach to match  i hate her armful 
of clattering bangles  the way she touches my mother’s 
arm & pretends to be her friend  the way she wrinkles 
her nose whenever she enters our apartment  her own 
apartment large & expensive but filled with awful gaudy 
objects  i giggle a little to myself at the memory of haitham 
saying to her  straight-faced 
aunt amal, would you agree that money can’t buy 
taste?  though my laugh dies as i hear her continue 
to mama  remember the girl you wanted to name 
yasmeen?  with yellow ribbons braided into her hair 
such a pretty name  i never understood 
why you chose the other
 
& in the mirror i try to unknot the hair tangled at my neck 
& of course there’s no point  i give up & stare 
into my blurring reflection  my body filled 
with strange static  & see only a smudge where my nose 
& mouth should be  only the eyes 
large & blinking & intact  & when i blink again it’s back 
the same unremarkable face
 
Mama
 
of course i know my mother is lonely 
her days & nights spent mostly in the company 
of ghosts  so much of who & what she’s loved 
she speaks of only in past tense  though mostly 
she keeps quiet  i can’t help but imagine 
that her life was enormous before we came here 
loud & crowded & lively as any party 
& then the final notes of the song  & everyone 
is gone  except me  & i feel my own smallness 
as i try to fill her life’s empty spaces 
though they gape around me like the one pair 
of her high-heeled shoes i used to love 
to play with when i was little  so much of our life 
feels like sitting at a table set for dozens 
who will never again arrive  the two of us surrounded 
by empty chairs  my mother is lonely 
& i am her daughter her only i think that might be why 
i’m lonely too 
The Photographs 
the photographs are how i piece together 
my imagining of my mother’s first life 
when she was aisha  life of the party 
a girl in a yellow dress who was going 
to be a dancer  loved & laughing 
& never lonely  a whole life stretched 
before her in the company of friends 
& family & the man she chose 
who chooses her & knows all 
her favorite songs  who watches her 
with awe  & never dies  his life 
braided tightly to the long bright ribbon of hers
 
i don’t think she even knows i have them 
these pictures  i’ve had them for years 
in the box i keep under my bed 
& she’s never noticed  because she never 
asks for them  because she hasn’t looked 
at them in years
								
									 Copyright © 2021 by Safia Elhillo. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.