Reading Nizar Qabbani in Jeddah, and: Every Soul Has Two Bodies, and: There Are Places You Can Hold Your Head High Samiah Haque (bio) Reading Nizar Qabbani in Jeddah Why is love in our city contraband and counterfeit?nizar qabbani, from Diary of an Indifferent Woman We read Nizar Qabbani on your white sheets.Two cups of Turkish coffee between us. You translate a sentence.Behind you is a painting of trees,growing thick and plenty,shrouded in grey-green shadows. What you don’t knowis that in my mothertongue your name meansfreedom. Shadeen. Shadinota is not something easy totaste even here, with your paintingof trees and poems where breastsare spun from two balls of silk. In your skin and hair, in your bloodis that special shield that protectsyou from our dark anonymity here,on streets our hands havecleaned, in villas our hands havebuilt. [End Page 102] Outside, your maid is feeding the cat.On the radio, Fairuzsings about waiting for aletter that will neverarrive. Every Soul Has Two Bodies I never met my father’s kafil,only my father’s anger over the yearsthat piled like layers of bint as sahnonly not as sweet. In the Quran, the word kafaladescribes the adoption of children.In Saudi Arabia, kafala* describesa worker’s owner, as if to own someoneis not a tricky and secret business,like black magic. What does it take tocompress a body’s naturalbeing? A being made of thousands of trees,and the love of a mother. A being with a mind thatcomprehends, and eyes that perceive. My father’s anger was the only weaponto protect him from the dark enchantmentthat told him: [End Page 103] No, you are not an engineer, you are a plumber.No, you cannot buy these sunglasses—they are Christian Diorand Christian Dior is only for us and Americans. No, we don’t care about the thirty years you gave us.We paid you, didn’t we? There Are Places You Can Hold Your Head High You ask: In spite of this all, why do you seek this captivity? The world is largethere are places you can hold your head high. We seek it for the Holy Mosque.This life is hard; to be near the Republic of Godbrings us peace. We seek it for the dailybrotherhood of bathing its marblegrounds. Twenty of us linking arms likesoldiers, with buckets of foamingsoap to erase the tears, sweat, and pissof the believers. [End Page 104] Do you know, all pilgrims,rich and poor, even shurta with theirbatons, in these moments defer to us. We seek it even as our bloodwashes their dead, applies atron their corpses so they smell pleasantfor the ground to receive. We seek it because here, our bloodcan gather in the largest of vegetablemarkets and we learn the trade of amerchant and live this closeto such an abundance of food.You wouldn’t know what it means. We seek it because our mothers,sisters, wives, and daughtersraised us with their hands foryears when we had nothing toofferbut hunger. Here in our mess halls we cook for ourselves,we clean for ourselves, and our women and childrencan have a tv set, a mobile phone,can wear two bangles and earrings of gold. We seek it because even though they tellus we are not citizens,we know what it is to be a citizen. We know what it isto hold our head high. [End Page 105] Samiah Haque Samiah Haque is a Bangladeshi-American Kundiman fellow, raised in Saudi Arabia, and a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program in Poetry. You can find her poetry at Santa Clara Review, Nashville Review, Paper Darts, Cimarron Review, Winter Tangerine Review, and elsewhere. She currently works at the University of Michigan’s Medical School. Footnotes * The kafala system is used to monitor migrant laborers, working primarily in the construction and domestic sectors, in the Middle East. The system requires all...
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Mar 31, 2023
Tarannum Shaikh + 5
Open Access
