The Nasib, standing at the ruins

RASHA ABDULHADI

standing here at the ruins of my beloved i weep over her deserted and broken home. the desert itself blows over us all now and we are abandoned to it, cut off from history, tribe, and the long silsila of poetic lineage. no one wears the long dress, no one keeps the old stories anymore: we are too easily ashamed of our sins in song and love. we are too afraid of our deeds in war— we fear punishment for our crimes or else persecution for our beliefs, and sometimes we can barely tell the difference anymore. we do not want to be found, and we have hidden so so well that we will soon be lost. the limbs of the tribe lie buried under stones carved in the ten thousand languages we have used to wash our tongues, to clean the patina of homeland and history from the folds of our minds. we will not answer questions about the runes tattooed on our hands, we will not talk about our younger brothers, the dangerous ones, the fragile ones. we hold on too long to our parents and ancestors, and we will not let them change form, catch fire, and become smoke that travels back over the sands. we cover our arms, hungry for another generation,

children and grandchildren, the nieces and nephews born to our siblings and cousins, our ears hungry to hear: ummi, khalti, 'ampti, 'amu, khalo,

Baba. ya Baba, yaha Baba ya bab, the doorway through which I pass when I do not know whether I'm coming in or going out— into the family, out to the desert, and what is the difference, in the end, really, standing here at the ruins of my beloved tribe, my hands full of dust, ashes, and sand, my nose full of smoke.