An Hour of Sahra

Cover art by Yasmine Omari

An hour of Sahra

The distant blue mountains frame the night,

Their shadows underlie the sahra along with Bitter Arabic coffee and the seasonal fruit.

Or whatever Setti

has sat cleaning that day.

Seedi

decides to switch screens,

in favor of solitude over our company;

nine females ages ranging six to 70,

While my father follows his mind,

always aiming at a far future,

And my older brother leaves the house's borderlines

nonchalantly,

Free of questioning.

I force a "ween rayeh"

in an attempt to establish a new hierarchy,

Hardly asking and barely waiting for an answer.

I sit in the lioness' den,

Tired and short-tempered as the rest of them/us.

“Tread carefully and never be afraid”- that's what she used to tell me.

“Wait for someone who deserves you.”

Same footsteps,

different feet.

Will you continue to dust your days as you rust?

Washing the sins of everyone around in the same sink as your dirty dishes,

Wiping the floors spotless clean,

as you leave your tears unattended,

Plucking at your patience simultaneously with every stem of Zaatar,

Clean, clean, all that could be cleaned

And leave the rest

To rot,

To us,

To its own expense,

As if bodies don't exist further than the food that needs to be prepared,

or the clothes that demand to be washed,

And biology is just another foreign concept you did not grow up with,

Lay your colorful pills neatly in your palm

Small souvenirs of your indestructibility,

As time gnaws at it

Lay your head neatly at night and think of the nothingness,

And yourself.

__________________________________

Photography by Yasmine Omari

My father is an oral diary

Of the last fifty years of war

Here

We pretend surviving is living.

20 kids have died so far

Wrapped like bonbons-

I don't know how many more will die -

That's the equivalent

Of all my cousins under 18 

Setti declared:

Any thoughts of leaving are not blessed

That we should stay

Here

“A thorn in their throats.”

I said I don’t want to be a thorn,

I want to live

“A stick up their asses then.”

These damned planes 

Keep the sky busy:

Its marshmallow clouds

Cut open

7:31 am

The sounds are softer now

The fighter planes are not as rude as before.

__________________________________

Photography by Yasmine Omari

War comes knocking on my bedroom door,

Politely.

I say we have no room for you now. There is no space anjad

we are full, saturated

of years of trauma next to the other,

Crammed trollies of slushed trauma

Jointed by the hip, by genes

By the same skin color

Trauma as old as the eggs in my grandmother’s ovaries:

sliced-up trauma, deli trauma, smoked PTSD

Put into plastic one-use packages and dumped

At the outer edges of the house

Creating line after smelly line 

For the cats to eat.

I watch silent sunsets,

Internal sunsets, 

Suns turning off,

Suns running out of fuel,

Gray suns,

Hanging layers,

more layers

Of lingering trauma

Drying up under our sun,

Looking for meaning becomes a darker task

In this moment of a becoming - long enough to harvest trauma’s black fruits

Short enough to never learn how not to lose the battle

Enough to have tea

made with death bags

In a corner with whatever family you still have.

If the whiteness of an Instagram reel makes you realize the eggs

You carry for future generations

were made under occupation,

And your mother’s and grandmother’s wombs got too familiar with fear

Will the color of your liberation still be red?