Sisters' Entrance Read online

  For anyone who’s ever grown up,

  for anyone who’s ever had to grow up;

  and for Fofo and for Monteha and

  for all my sisters and for my brothers,

  and for my mother three times

  and then my father.

  contents

  The Girl with Ribbons in Her Hair

  Sometimes God Answers

  The Life of a Refugee Is Counted in Moments

  Stand Up to Allah

  We Never Hire Gravediggers

  Index

  the girl with

  ribbons in her hair

  People Like Us

  Memories of my childhood live

  between the rings of sand around my ankles

  and the desert heat in my lungs.

  I still believe that nothing washes

  worry from tired skin better than the Nile

  and my grandma’s hands.

  Every day I go to school

  with the weight of dead neighbors

  on my shoulders.

  The first time I saw bomb smoke,

  it didn’t wind and billow like the heat

  from our kitchen hearth.

  It forced itself on the Darfur sky,

  smothering the sun

  with tears that it stole

  from our bodies.

  The worst thing about genocide

  isn’t the murder, the politics, the hunger,

  the government-paid soldiers

  that chase you across borders

  and into camps.

  It’s the silence.

  For three months, they closed the schools down

  because people like us are an eyesore.

  The first month, we took it.

  The second, we waited.

  The third month, we met underneath the date palm trees,

  drinking up every second our teachers gave us,

  turning fruit pits into fractions.

  On the last day, they came with a message

  Put them in their place.

  We didn’t stand a chance.

  Flesh was never meant to dance

  with silver bullets.

  So we prayed for the sun to come

  and melt daggers from our backs.

  Lifted our voices up to God

  until the clouds were spent for weeping

  and the sand beneath our toes

  echoed with the song of every soul

  that ever walked before us.

  I hid underneath the bed that day

  with four other people.

  Twelve years later and I can’t help but wonder

  where my cousins hid when the soldiers

  torched the houses,

  threw the bodies

  in the wells.

  If the weapons didn’t get you,

  the poison would.

  Sometimes, they didn’t want to use bullets

  because it would cost them more than we did.

  I’ve seen sixteen ways to stop a heart.

  When you build nations on someone’s bones

  what sense does it make to break them?

  In one day, my mother choked on rifle smoke,

  my father washed the blood from his face,

  my uncles carried half the bodies

  to the hospital,

  the rest to the grave.

  We watched.

  For every funeral we planned

  there were sixty we couldn’t.

  Half the sand in the Sahara

  tastes a lot like powdered bone.

  When the soldiers came,

  our blood on their ankles,

  I remember their laces,

  scarlet footprints on the floor.

  I remember waking to the sound

  of hushed voices in the night

  etched with the kind of sorrow

  that turns even the loudest dreams

  to ash.

  Our parents came home with broken collarbones

  and the taste of fear carved

  into their skin.

  It was impossible to believe in anything.

  Fear is the coldest thing in the desert,

  and it burns you—

  bows you down to half your height

  and owns you.

  And no one hears you,

  because what could grow

  in the desert

  anyway?

  August

  Remorse is my grandmother’s pear tree,

  me bent over a tin pail washing dishes

  in the sun of our final moments.

  The water drawn from a drying well

  by a niece I did not know.

  The porcelain scraping sand

  against the pail, eroding

  like my family.

  Like the strained conversation

  between my mother sitting across

  from the woman she hadn’t seen

  in five years—

  Me, the daughter she hadn’t seen in one.

  Sisters’ Entrance

  Ms. Amal tried to teach us about love

  in Sunday school.

  She said:

  God is a poet.

  He opened up the sky,

  spilled His word across our skin,

  and called it revelation.

  This aging giant, with

  a soft spot for affection, made

  you and me and a soul mate for every one of us

  as long as we wait.

  We couldn’t.

  Restless hands clasped under classroom tables.

  Obsidian eyes locked across prayer aisles

  as we slowly opened our minds to

  the gravity of one another.

  Passion is a paradox in the house of God;

  a weightless anchoring that draws you

  closer to your Creator and

  makes you fear the heart he gave you.

  You confuse enchantment with doubt,

  desire with insubordination,

  stranger to the weight of it all.

  That’s when they started separating us:

  girls’ side, boys’ side

  and then by age,

  they introduced us to the Sisters’ Entrance.

  Sesame Candy

  Remember the summer we planted arugula

  in the sidewalk garden

  the same year the boys covered their heads in ash

  the same year we didn’t know anyone new

  the same year grandpa called all of us wicked?

  I go back there sometimes, next to the dogwood tree

  and see the place where our garden used to grow

  the magnolia, the figs

  I take the seeds home with me

  I keep them in a desk drawer

  waiting for a drier year,

  or a rainy one, or a reason

  I keep hoping that I’ll turn away

  and look back and see those girls playing again,

  the ones we used to be before the war.

  Afternoon Naps in the House of God

  I lay my head on cushions

  so clean

  they smell like piety,

  back propped against a wall

  so firm

  it sticks out

 
like doubt.

  Loose Threads

  Our teacher’s cousin planned

  her wedding for the week after Ramadan.

  We filled the hall with decorations,

  sequins spilling from the closet

  in the corner.

  Our veils unfurled.

  Hooded sisters opening their pages

  to one another.

  A quick break to pray Maghreb

  a whole room full of laughs.

  Our belly dance shoes at the door

  lest the rugs start to bruise

  from our footsteps.

  Shoulder to shoulder,

  wrist to wrist,

  we bore all.

  That’s the secret to the sisters’ side:

  no drama, no apologies

  no worries, no reservations,

  no sleeves.

  Euphoria at Community Prayer

  Belief is not transferable,

  but, not unlike guilt, it burns brightly

  by association.

  #MuslimParents

  Layla and Ahmed had

  their first kiss in

  the basement of the mosque

  where we keep the

  extra prayer rugs.

  The Imam caught them—

  tricked them into thinking

  they were married.

  Layla’s parents laughed

  all the way home,

  said, Relax, you’re seven.

  Ahmed’s parents

  took away his iPhone.

  The Imam on Charity

  I counted three Maseratis,

  two Ferraris, and

  a Lamborghini

  in the parking lot.

  Reach into your pockets

  and

  cough up some piety.

  One-Drop Well

  The girl with ribbons in her hair has

  ribbons on the inside of her wrist

  I saw her losing hope today.

  They say if you hold love in your heart

  And not in your hand

  You’ll be free to break the fall

  I tell her, I don’t fall

  I dive

  Headfirst

  Into a patchwork pavement

  The gravel in my teeth a testament

  That these parts of me were salvaged

  from a story much older than myself—

  from the first small boy

  who grew up to be

  my father’s father,

  from the first young girl

  who didn’t give in to the wish

  to rest completely

  from my grandfather

  who didn’t give up the mountain

  from the aunt who raised her sister’s children

  when my grandmother couldn’t

  from the tears that fell

  when they broke the rock

  to dig the well

  the water’s song

  the bedrock’s gift

  the one-man road my father dug

  At a funeral, my great-aunt grabs my arm.

  I don’t know her. It hurts her more than the son who died—

  My uncle, Ocean—his sister says

  the sea has dried for her.

  I broke myself 500 times

  before the pieces started making sense.

  From the bloodied mayhem

  I make new

  me, who I want to be, who I am.

  Three sisters who contradict each other

  and yet don’t exist without

  the other.

  I dig again

  to reclaim the things lay buried there

  the hopes I shed after every tumble

  the elbow I grazed when I was three

  the boy I don’t love anymore

  the family I still do.

  sometimes God answers

  The Talk

  I asked my mother

  where babies come from.

  She said:

  “When two parents want

  a baby

  they do . . . a

  special prayer.

  If God wants them to

  have a baby,

  they do.

  If not,

  they do the prayer again

  and again

  and again.

  Sometimes God answers.

  Sometimes He doesn’t.”

  Sustenance

  The word of God

  ringing above

  competes with

  dinner plans and

  neighborly

  gossip.

  The

  Holy Spirit

  sounds

  so

  human

  in this room.

  Year-Round

  Babies cry

  on the women’s side,

  fists firm, eyes shut, bodies screaming.

  Frail voices

  extend the reach of one another.

  Disrupt the call to prayer.

  We take them to their fathers.

  Babies cry on the men’s side too.

  The Bride

  I met her on her wedding day,

  walked up to her, and smiled.

  No one ever talks to the bride.

  I thought it might be interesting

  to try something new.

  Break tradition.

  Henna patterns wrapped

  around her wrists, climbed

  up her arms,

  spreading blossoms on tender flesh.

  Her lips were a wilted crimson,

  tilted ever so slightly to the side.

  The perfect almost smile.

  The first thing her mother taught her

  was to wipe the tears

  before the blood dries.

  Shredded knees heal, but shame

  never fades away. Don’t climb trees

  or ride bikes, that’s how little girls

  lose their virginity.

  She sat on a porcelain throne,

  beads and bows holding

  plastic flowers to the armrests.

  are you alright? I asked

  I shouldn’t cry she said,

  fingers catching tired tears.

  it’s fine to cry, you’ll be happy later.

  I shouldn’t cry

  how long have you known him?

  I don’t.

  She was 17 years old,

  just graduated high school.

  Her parents sent her to college

  because an educated girl

  can earn a bigger dowry,

  but this mister didn’t mind a country girl.

  He grew up with her father.

  Didn’t need an intellectual,

  just someone who could feed the kids

  while he raised them.

  She was a mail-order bride

  and her father licked the stamp.

  I cried.

  How many weddings have I been to?

  She just got off the plane

  twelve hours ago, and they already

  started dressing her.

  No time to take measurements

  so they pinned satin to her skin,

  tucked her in to the time-tested wire frame

  our ancestors welded.

  If you put a girl in a steel corset

 
you’ll never have to hear her scream.

  She was gorgeous.

  You could put anyone in her dress

  and it wouldn’t make a difference.

  We were guests of the groom

  this was his wedding.

  No one knew her name.

  She only spoke Arabic.

  No one knew her name.

  And she danced until the tears came.

  The middle-aged used-to-be brides

  explained it away.

  She remembered her mother

  they said.

  Brides always cry when they remember

  their mothers.

  She’ll have her fifth child by thirty.

  My parents protected me

  from all the broken men

  and their flesh-eating fingers.

  Said one day I’d find someone who

  can cook as well as my dad

  and is almost as smart as my mom,

  who’d hold me so close that I could

  breathe in their memories.

  When I told my parents about the bride

  and all we could do was hold her hand,

  it killed me.

  Tonight he’ll crush the henna blossoms

  on her wrists with the same hands the man

  next door threw at his wife last Thursday,

  the same fists that taught a daughter

  to keep her mouth shut.

  He’ll flatten the ridges of her spine

  and she’ll hold her tongue.

  Bite the screams as they come.

  Wipe the tears before the blood dries.

  No one ever talks to the bride.

  The Things She Told Me

  I asked my mother to lend me her strength.

  She proceeded to lift an entire planet

  from her back.

  A pearl necklace, her wedding dress,

  rubber gloves from the kitchen sink,

  the shoes she wore in elementary school,

  her diploma, two fistfuls of hope

  and a tattered legacy of fear,

  the kiss from the boy next door,

  her father’s walking stick,

  two pence for the market,

  a basket full of the finest okra,

  an envelope of desert sand,

  three safety pins,

  one pair of sturdy khaki pants—

  good for work but not for raising children—