For Subhi Hadidi

 

A man goes

from Damascus to Paris

whether passing through a tunnel

or slicing through the air

I wouldn’t know

suddenly I saw the East in motion

quivering without a center

I covered the distance of years from Jerusalem to Beer-Sheva

without preparing my things for  an exile

likea prostrate Ezekiel

in a Babylon bed

365 days

his beloved dead and Zion exiled

Abraham went up from Beer-Sheva to Moriah

three days

in his mind binding and unbinding his son

three days slaughtering and weeping

still bound and unbound are we

those weeping and butchering?

Those laughing and butchering?

how they all go

and there is already one who emerged and encroached the city of the dead

is that where we are headed?

while I yearn to be dug out of the graves

how

long will there be nothing

but life racing backwards

mask-face and my own face

if I were a man imprisoned as a woman

if I were a prayer in terse phrases

if the mountains of Jerusalem were in the deserts of Beer-Sheva

many a desert have I walked

without reaching Mount Moriah

now I feel in my homeland

for suddenly I see how fickle is this land, how disconcerting its tremor

and among my brothers I roam

some going from Iraq to America

some from Lebanon to Nicosia

some from Israel to Palestine

some from Israel to Israel to Israel to Israel

confronting absence for Israel is voided from Israel

you who wanted to be free in your land

pack your things for exile

there is no free man who has not been cast out

am I not a girl

am I not a woman

cast out from man

with neither mother nor father

am I not a person

dispossessed of words

ousted but not in exile

yet in my own land my people

buried not in the desert

but become my coffin in redundancy

exiled not in distance

but in this dust

conquering blood and tears

and choking

a man soars and soars

if with weeping or Vodka

I would not know

will it always be this way in the East

either spirit or soil

in the meantime I prefer to inhabit the word

another home does not yet exist

if it ever did

within my Hebrewness my blindness my Arabesqueness

a music merely being played

my lips move

but my voice unheard

adults cursed and loved in this language

from which I’d been banished from any redemption

“Hebrew speak Hebrew”

while the East still howls