Home Is Not a Country

Safia Elhillo

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ISBN 9780593177051 (trade) — ISBN 9780593177068 (lib. bdg.) — ebook ISBN 9780593177075

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Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue: New Country

i: The Photograph

ii: Baba

iii: Mama

iv: Haitham

v: School

vi: America

vii: Yasmeen

viii: Nostalgia Monster

ix: My Name

Part 1: The Other Side

1: The Airport

2: Mama

3: Haitham

4: Pyramids

5: Haitham

6: Haitham

7: An Illness

8: Haitham

9: Khaltu Hala

10: Mama

11: Overheard

12: Mama

13: The Photographs

14: Mama

15: Overheard

16: Another Life

17: Baba

18: Haitham

19: Boys

20: The Mirror

21: Videos

22: English

23: English

24: Halloween

25: Mama

26: Yasmeen

27: Yasmeen

28: Haitham

29: Bathwater

30: Haitham

31: Advice

32: Calling Haitham

33: Jinn

34: Boys

35: Arabic Class

36: The Headscarf

37: The Office

38: Outside the Office

39: Why Here

40: Ghosts

41: The Silence

42: Alone

43: Mama

44: Yasmeen

45: Haitham

46: The Bus

Part 2: Old Country

47: Haitham

48: Hala

49: Touched

50: Running

51: Street Fair

52: Houses

53: Trespassing

54: The Water

55: Caught

56: The Diner

57: The Stranger

58: The Stranger

59: The Driveway

60: The Airport

61: Broken Arabic

62: No Daughter

63: The Elevator

64: The Photograph

65: Home

66: Home

67: Haitham

68: Ashraf

69: Visitors

70: Haitham

71: The Lesson

72: The Lovers

73: Yasmeen

74: The House

75: Morning

76: The Photographs

77: Yasmeen

78: Room

79: Hala

80: Hala

81: Baba

82: Baba

83: The Coward

84: Mama

85: The Game

86: Quiet

87: A Country

88: Yasmeen

89: Half Possible

90: A Single Possibility

91: Yasmeen

92: Yesterday & Tomorrow

93: Dusk

94: The Lesson

95: An Alternate Possibility

96: A Life

97: Yasmeen

98: Yasmeen

99: Spirits

100: Alone

101: Alone

102: Yasmeen

103: The Plan

104: The Cafe

105: Yasmeen

106: Leaving

107: Breaking

108: The Officers

109: Leaving

110: Gone

111: Left Behind

112: The Baby

Part 3: Home Is Not a Country

113: The Portal

114: The Portal

115: Home

116: The Photographs

117: The Kitchen

118: Haitham

119: Haitham

120: Haitham

121: Home Is Not a Country

122: The Singer

123: Nima

124: Yasmeen

125: Jazz

126: Yellow

Acknowledgments

About the Author

To my communities. To Awrad & Basma. You are my country.

Dear Reader,

The truth is, this is just one life of many you could have led.

At some point you made the choice to pick up this book, but you could have chosen something else to do. Before that there were other decisions—you chose to walk down one street or another, to take the bus, to talk to that stranger. Even earlier there were decisions made before you were born, decisions that have profoundly affected who you are right now, what language you speak, where you live, even how you dream.

It seems to me that this knowledge—that you could have just as easily been any one of a hundred other people—is at the heart of empathy. It’s the realization that every person you meet, or see on the news, or hear about could have been you, if you had made slightly different choices, or if your grandparents had made different choices, going way back, into a great tree of different choices that looks like an entire world of people who aren’t you, but might have been.

Some people have the gift of understanding that they could have been other people; Nima is one of them. She understands that her own life is just one branch of a tree, and the seeds that became her could have just as easily become someone else. She rides her nostalgia and the strange here-and-there-ness that is every immigrant’s story to full visions of who she should have been if…And maybe we fantasize that we would be happier as that other person, or that we could run faster, or be more loved.

So many stories are about just this thing, the fantasy of what it would mean to be someone else. All the lions and wardrobes, all the kids with secret powers, even the cats in hats. But what they fail to realize is that just as much as there are the many people we could have been, these people live in the corners of imagination and, perhaps, they are wishing that they could be us.

Welcome, then, to Safia Elhillo’s Home Is Not a Country, a tree of identities, of who we are and who we could be, and the dangerous and beautiful place in between.

Christopher Myers

The Photograph

in a lifetime before mine my parents

not yet my parents only a slim girl

the color of cinnamon skirt swirled liquid

about her knees as she dances eyes cast

downward smiling shyly at a boy

who mirrors her movement to the song the little

gap in his front teeth cigarette tucked

behind an ear & shirt unbuttoned down his chest

sepia hand longing for her waist frozen

immortal in the photograph wondering

if they will ever touch

Baba

the photographs of my father are everywhere

alone in a suit framed in the living room

seated with his afro full taped to the mirror of my mother’s dresser

in the one on the coffee table he stares awestruck at his bride

a passport picture in mama’s wallet a single furrow in his brow

i like the ones of him younger rounded & serious as a child

dusty-kneed as a teenager crowded with other boys around a ball

before the car crash that took him from knowing me

before the father-sized ache before my mother all alone

still crowding herself to one side of the bed saving his place

soft browns of the sepia photos

making him impossibly far away

Mama

in this photo my mother is alone

as i will come to know her

it is her wedding day back home

a lifetime right before mine before

the new country & the widowing

& the worry lines stamped into her brow

her eyelashes painted dark beneath

a headdress of silver coins

strung across her forehead

& her hands floating up to fix

the arch of her headscarf

soil-colored blooms of henna

twisting from both elbows to

each finger

a different country a different

life the henna since faded

& the story hushed to memory

to old bits of song from oceans away

we are no longer back home

the headdress has been sold & my mother

is alone is at work is rushed

in her headscarf & blue jeans

& it hasn’t been her wedding day in years

her name aisha means she who lives

but mostly she goes to work & comes home tired

& watches television & sometimes

in the television’s blue glow

her eyes make tears that do not fall

i keep this photograph in a tin box

that once held butter biscuits

long ago eaten by guests unimpressed

with our spare american living

Haitham

we’ve always known each other

our mothers friends from back home

bound into some ancient sisterhood

of grief his mother the only one

who can make my mother laugh

but when i really meet him when

we enter a siblinghood of our own

i am wearing the first new coat i have ever

owned & we are both entering the age that

makes our elbows feel larger than the rest

of our bodies

the wal-mart lights are cold & harsh

blunt squeak of his shoes against

the polished floors nothing left of

my mother’s date-palm trees his

mother’s riverbank only suburban

america no matter how far

we strain our eyes our mothers

share a shopping cart & speak shy

quiet english testing new words

like coupon & value-pack his

polo shirt hangs loose about him

years before the shoulders

to come & all they’ll have to carry

later at the bus stop our mothers

fish for change at the bottoms

of their worn handbags he lifts

the hem of his shirt just a little

to show me a pack of stolen starburst

tucked into the waist of his jeans

are you going to tell? he whispers

& i shake my head thrumming

with excitement & fear a grin

stretches across his face good

he begins unwrapping the candy

because half of these are yours

School

i’ve never felt like i was good at anything

haitham for all his atrocious grades

is at least good at people while i am a solid

b minus in every class & barely scraping

a passing grade in any social interaction

muttering & burdened by the shadow of an accent

that i cannot manage to make charming

at school haitham & i separate for the day

he’s repeating ninth grade & we now have

different lunch periods where i sit with

an assortment of others all citizens of

the social margins & though assembled

we do not talk we poke glumly at our wilted lunches

i long ago begged mama to stop packing

leftovers for me to take to school the smell alone

one morning filled the entire bus despite

my seat in the back where i waited

for everyone to pile out through the folding doors

before slumping outside myself throwing away

the offending plastic container of okra & lamb & rice

before anyone could know it was mine

now instead i make my own dejected sandwiches

damp in their paper towels two pieces of untoasted

white bread & between them a single slice

of plasticky american cheese

America

i go to halfhearted arabic classes each sunday

in a rented room at the middle school & bleat

alef baa taa thaa & agree with

haitham who sits behind me that this is like

so boring

we never ask why our mothers had come here

& could not let it go though i always beg

for the same crumpled photograph stories of

weddings that went on for weeks cafes crowded

with poets gardens lush & humming

with mosquitoes

we whisper to each other if it’s so great there

then why don’t we ever go back

but i have always listened to the stories

& every day i long at school i still

do not speak i wear the same

fleece sweatshirt washed & rewashed

the girl who sits behind me in math

came over once to work

on a project told everyone after

that it smelled like rice & dirty plants

wondered aloud if my mother

was bald under the headscarf

in my silence i dress myself

in yellow & imagine

a garden thick with date palms

a girl mouth open & fluent

who knows where she is from

Yasmeen

my mother meant to name me for her favorite flower

its sweetness garlands made for pretty girls

for parties to be worn thick in heavy hair

instead i got this name & i don’t even know why

maybe named for some unknown dead relative

some dreary ghost so of course no one wants me

at their party their sleepover their after-school trip to the mall

of course i fade to the back of the classroom the photos

& in the hallways no one looks my way some days i walk to school because the bus driver does not see me at the stop

& when i spot my homeroom teacher in the supermarket

she glances & squints like she isn’t quite sure who i am

i imagine her yasmeen this other girl bright & alive

mouth full & dripping with language easy in her charm

& in essence she looks like me but of course

better nails unbitten & painted turquoise her hair

unknotted & long ears glittering with stud earrings

not like mine thick with keloid from an infected piercing

i imagine her back home fathered beloved

knowing all the songs & all their corresponding dances

laughing big & showing all her teeth

invited to all the parties

called to from across the street by classmates by teachers

jewel of the neighborhood & somehow

a little taller than me

like there are extra bones in her spine

like everyone knows her name & i ache

to have been born her instead

Nostalgia Monster

haitham calls me a nostalgia monster & likes to laugh

at the dream-brain that takes over mine when i hear

the old songs & run my fingers

over the old photographs i know the words

to the old films & imagine myself gliding in

to join the dance glamorous in black & white

photographed in sepia frozen in a perfect time

i wish our arabic teacher would tell us more

about what it was like back then before everyone

left when they were young & dreaming

& hearing the songs crackling out of a radio

but i cannot imagine him young or dancing

cannot imagine him any way except the way we know

him now scowling over conjugations & how

we mispronounce the language how it wilts

on our american tongues

one of my favorites is a sayed khalifa song

where he sings to a girl he calls a pearl necklace

& says

where are the beautiful ones where did they go

& i think he means us all the ones who left

all the gone