Sand Opera
Lenten Journey Day 19
“Recipe from
the Abbasid”: Palimpsests of God + Layla Azmi Goushey & Sarah Browning
Of course I
have no idea who God is. In the Scripture today, the first reading is from the
opening of Exodus, when Moses, tending the flock, came to Horeb, and he walks
by a burning bush (“the bush, though on fire, was not consumed”). This bush begins
speaking to him in the voice of God. Is God. Is “I am who am.” Is Is.
Somewhere I’ve
read from Kazim Ali, on translations of Allah in Islam, and from Alicia
Ostriker, on the Jewish and Christian traditions, that there is a God beneath
the God we have conceived. (Kazim’s Fasting at Ramadan, of course, is
partly an inspiration to this project. شكرا). All our human knowing of God (and
world!) is incomplete, fragmentary, myopic, dangerously partial (in both senses
of the word).
Ostriker: “But
I do know that when women’s spiritual insights contribute as much as men’s have
done until now, to what we think God is, or the soul, or good and evil, all
these things will be different. The being we call God the Father swallowed God
the Mother in pre-history. But like the grandmother that the wolf swallows in
Little Red Riding Hood, the Goddess is not dead. She’s still there in the belly
of the beast. It’s time for her to be re-born, and we can all be midwives.”
How can we midwife
a new sense of the divine, when we can’t even understand and embrace the layers
of Iraq, or ourselves, for that matter? I’m thinking of these layers today,
partly because of the poem I’m posting, “Recipe from the Abbasid,” which
concerns an ancient recipe dating from the 13th century (the source
will be revealed tomorrow), creates a palimpsest between the 13th
and the 20th centuries, two eras of empires in Iraq, two of many
eras—Iraq being not just a benighted country riven by civil war, nor just a
site of imperial longing, but a place that is the cradle of civilization, host
of thousands and thousands of years of human history. I recall reading with
delight many years ago Samuel Noah Kramer’s History Begins at Sumer (1956),
which is doubtlessly flawed but eye-opening in many ways.
Today,
alongside “Recipe from the Abbasid,” is Layla Azmi Goushey’s reflection on it
and Munif’s classic Cities of Salt, and Sarah Browning’s poem “Gas.”
Many layers to dig through!
Recipe from
the Abbasid
Skin &
clean a fat, young sheep & open it
like a door, a
port city hosting overseas guests
& remove
its stomach. In its interior, place
surveyors in
exploratory khaki, a stuffed goose
& in the
goose’s belly, a stuffed hen, & in the hen,
machine gun
nests, C rations, grenades, a stuffed
pigeon, &
in the pigeon’s belly, a stuffed thrush,
& in the
thrush’s belly, contractual negotiations
& subtle
threats, all sprinkled with sauce. Sew the slit
into a smile,
dispatch handshakes. Add Chevron,
Exxon, Texaco,
Shell. Place the sheep in the oven
& leave
until this black slimy stuff, excretion
of the earth’s
body, is crispy on the outside
& ready for
presentation.
“‘Recipe for
the Abbasid’ and Cities of Salt: Collective Memories” by Layla
Azmi-Goushey
Compassion can be exorcised for the
price of a Gulf starling.
Nets are cast across shorn winter fields to catch the oil-black iridescent
birds speckled with white dots. The nets are lifted, and, like the bedouins in Cities
of Salt, the zarzour's migration is interrupted. They are placed in cages
for passersby to purchase for merciful release or they come with a Recipe to gut open like a door to roast and consume their dignity and strength.
In Munif’s Cities of Salt, the Emir tells workers in Metres’s new port city hosting overseas guests to
kill a camel and several sheep to welcome the Americans. The head of the camel
is placed in front of the American chief and the heads of the sheep are placed
before the other American guests. The heads’ sincere humble smiles face the surveyors
in exploratory khaki. The Emir’s sacrifice a sad parody of Eid al-Adha;
Ibrahim’s sacrifice to a merciful God.
In truth, not
much changed between the Abbasid and Aramco dynasties. Our collective
unconscious travels along slow genetic DNA trails. Golden ages are defined by
the victors. Suture this generous wound; roast this humble beast emitting a
petroleum blood-pudding butter. Carboniferous residue denying mercy to the
sweet-songed bulbul thrush; the pigeon a victim of Munif’s Emir’s falcon...
a stuffed goose & in
the goose’s belly, a stuffed hen, & in the hen… a stuffed pigeon, & in
the pigeon’s belly, a stuffed thrush, & in the thrush’s belly… layers of cooked ambitions and
manipulations black layer of machine gun nests, C rations, grenades…
contractual negotiations & subtle threats. Great glass cities of salt that will melt back into the
sands of Wadi Ibrahim. Opportunities for occasional mercy imprisoned in the
belly of treacherous sacrifice. The recipe and the ingredients never change.
Layla Azmi
Goushey is a Palestinian-American writer and educator based in Saint Louis, MO.
Assistant Professor of English at St. Louis Community College, she holds a
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and a Certificate in the Teaching of
Writing from the University of Missouri - St. Louis where she is pursuing a PhD
in Adult Education. Goushey's work has been published in journals such as
“Yellow Medicine Review”, “Mizna: Journal of Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring
Arab America”, and “Natural Bridge”. She writes a blog titled Transnational
Literacies at http://transnationalliteracies.blogspot.com/. Follow her on Twitter @lgoushey.
“Gas” by
Sarah Browning
After the great
snow of 2016, my car sits
locked in icy
drifts a week, green fossil
of the oil age
preserved in graying amber.
I relearn the
art of walking, of reading
pocket
paperbacks on the bus, which uses
this same
stuff, this gas, to bear us through
the
snow-narrowed streets of Washington, DC –
Capital of
Exxon, Capital City of Shell;
still we are
two dozen here driving one tank.
Once the rains
come and the weather gang
shakes their
collective heads as the mercury
rises to 60
degrees, my car is free to roam again
the Precincts
of BP, the Republic of Sunoco.
I’ll drive my
car to the climate change rally.
I’ll drive it
to the poetry reading that protests
war in Iraq,
that denounces repression in Syria,
that stands in
solidarity with poets locked up
in Saudi
Arabia. My car gives me that much
freedom and
power, plus music to soothe me
and a phone
charger to keep me connected
to my comrades
in struggle. My car glides
smoothly in and
out of gear, builds my self-
esteem as I
parallel park perfectly each day
in tight spots
on the hill where we dwell.
The weather
scares me. The wars enrage me.
The poets,
silenced by the despots, break my heart.
But my car
needs me. My car is nothing
without me. My
car and I are one. I pledged
my allegiance
long ago – an American century
ago – to my
beautiful, necessary, beloved car.
--Sarah
Browning is co-founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock. She
is an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and a featured
writer for Other Words. Author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007),
now in its second printing, and coeditor of D.C. Poets Against the
War: An Anthology (Argonne House Press, 2004), she is the recipient of
artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, a
Creative Communities Initiative grant, and the People Before Profits Poetry
Prize. In March, 2014 Browning co-edited a special Split This Rock issue of
POETRY Magazine with Don Share.
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