The water of life
My beloved has gifted us this water of life / This ocean which has the power to create or destroy / Yet in it we blindly place our trust
Image Credit: Nandini Dhir
A F A T H E R’ S L O V E A N D S P I N A C H
I.
The sun stole the colour from my father's face,
love and loss mingled in the blue-black beneath his eyes like rivers winding through the wrinkles of sleepless skin.
I could not curse the sun for what she has done
but rather Allah who allowed for this monochromatic man.
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as she slept through what seemed like endless summer days
he stumbled through each moment and slept in the bed of another.
each woman almost the same as the last, all in a desperate attempt to colour his face like she did.
But they can never paint his cheeks like the woman of carob syrup, like my mother.
II.
A woman of copper skin stood in the shadow of my father, through his eyes swooped cloaked love
She had a forgetful name and a face like a brick, in her face I could not see any love!
Her heels marked the wooden floor as she entered our home, her nose walking through the door before she did.
A bouquet of spinach appeared in my arms “wash them” the nose breathed, no breath of love.
The green mingled with wrinkled hands, a gift from the phoenix. How do I clean spinach?
As I washed with uncertainty and unclear water a woman approached with wisdom and what seemed to be love.
III.
“What is a child doing out in the street?!” She asked where my mother was, in my tears the light fractured.
Her hand slipped into mine, the bouquet melting into the grass beneath it, the hand took me to my home which was fractured
A breath of noise pushed its way out of the mouth of copper and rust, “where is the spinach?”
The hand replied, “where is her mother?”. At the final syllable, my heart fractured.
The hand placed bronze coins in the palm of the monochromatic man, the lustre seemed to further drain his colour.
As the metal rattled the hand constricted, Although I knew not what the rattle meant- I knew my life was now fractured.
T H E W A T E R O F L I F E
The man let loose the rope which tied us tightly to our homeland as we drift.
Madhi holds me close as those at the shore weep with their foreheads just touching the sand, asking Allah to say their goodbyes for them. I place my chin on my knees and watch those strangers sitting next to me,
what a curious sight!
They glow a sort of yellow hue, elated, I cannot tell if it’s the early dawn light refracting in the dew collected on their baby hairs or a halo forming around their scalp.
Perhaps the prayer of those with the sandy faces had already had its effect?
Or the water of life has been swallow’d by us who appear to be sailing on it.
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Exposed toes turn blue with the coolness of the water seeping in
Sunken eyes heavy with the memories of where they left from
Irises mirroring the glister of the sea as they remember where they are going.
Many sleep on deck;
I assume to enjoy the sunrise
Where the sun in her beauty stole what dreams they may have
And moulded them into a most beautiful red apparition
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Shreds of dialogue peeking out when voices are unlocked from their shackles
And stories shared of unlawful or pensive pasts
Followed by reverie and trepidation of what might be to come.
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My beloved has gifted us this water of life
This ocean which has the power to create or destroy
Yet in it we blindly place our trust
to transform what we have once known
into opportunity for us to become
to take us to Falah.
F R A G M E N T E D
I dream of my life across the river, each apparition with
borrowed faces from photographs of a woman I used to call mother
Her hair of dark ringlets and the thickness of her brows
her body rounded, soft like the language she speaks
Oh mother, my beloved, forgive me
As I wake to the now homely sound of engines and horns
I say “good morning”
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not “merhaba”
How dare I commit such a crime
I have robbed myself of my past, my life before falah
What use is translation, is this damnation
How dare I forget the meaning
of the very words I was born of.
The taste of carob has not touched my lips since she was here
How dare I purchase such a delicacy
with a label in a language other than hers
my clumsy tongue stumbling over two dialects
tripping over consonants
becoming singed when attempting to touch the scripture of gold
my knees have scarcely touched the mat of crimson
my heart severed from the sacred touch of my beloved.
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How dare i, even in my clouded english
rob myself of such a thing?