Sand Opera Lenten Journey Day 43: What
Have We Done With Us? + Yahia Lababidi and Hayan Charara
Lord, in your great love, answer me.
For your sake I bear insult,
and shame covers my face.
I have become an outcast to my brothers,
a stranger to my mother’s sons,
because zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who blaspheme you fall upon me.
--Psalm 69
From “Homefront/Removes” (Sand Opera)
) (
As if, somehow, I were responsible. Patriotism is a feeling, the student
wrote, that is rotted deep inside every one
of us, and it’s hard to let something
such as your country go to shame. The photos of hijackers in the newspaper
looked like a Warhol of our family album (the women oddly absent), portraits
bleared in displaced layers of ink. Who fed you, who changed you, who memorized
your hands, who breathed you in? The ex-editor of Life lays down the old rule
of thumb in journalism: one person
dead in your paper’s hometown equals five dead the next town over equals fifty
dead in the next state or 5,000 dead in China. The homeland is late blue, and
tastes of metal, like blood in the mouth. My cousins my demons my plotting and foiled
selves, what have you done, what have we done with us?
“Breath”
by Yahia Lababidi
Beneath
the intricate network of noise
there’s
a still more persistent tapestry
woven
of whispers, murmurs and chants
It’s
the heaving breath of the very earth
carrying
along the prayer of all things:
trees,
ants, stones, creeks and mountains, alike
All
giving silent thanks and remembrance
each
moment, as a tug on a rosary bead
while
we hurry past, heedless of the mysteries
And,
yet, every secret wants to be told
every
shy creature to approach and trust us
if
we patiently listen, with all our senses.
--Yahia Lababidi, Egyptian-American,
is the author of 6 books of poetry and prose. “Breath” can be found in his
latest collection, Balancing Acts: New
& Selected Poems(1993-2015) available for pre-order here: http://www.press53.com/Yahia_Lababidi.html
“Usage” by Hayan Charara
An assumption, a pejorative,
an honest language,
an honorable death. In grade school, I refused to accept
the mayor’s
handshake; he smiled at everyone except
people with
names like mine. I was born here.
I didn’t have
to adopt America, but I adapted to it.
You understand:
a man must be averse to opinions
that have adverse impacts on whether he lives
or dies.
“Before taking any advice, know the
language
of those who
seek to advise you.” Certain words
affected me. Sand nigger, I was called. Camel
jockey.
What was the effect? While I already muttered
under my
breath, I did so even more. I am not
altogether sure we can all together come. Everything
was not all right. Everything is not all right.
Imagine poetry
without allusions to Shakespeare,
Greek
mythology, the Bible; or allusions
without
the adjectives
“fanatical,” “extremist,” “Islamic,”
“right,”
“left,” “Christian,” “conservative,” “liberal.”
Language
written or translated into a single tongue
gives the illusion of tradition. A lot of people murder
language—a lot fully aware. Among all the dead,
choose between “us” and “them.” Among all the names
for the
dead—mother, father, brother, sister,
husband, wife,
child, friend, colleague, neighbor,
teacher,
student, stranger—choose between
“citizen” and
“terrorist.” And poet? Immoral,
yes, but never amoral? Large amounts, the number
between 75 and
90 percent of the estimated
150 million to
1 billion—civilians—killed during wars,
over all of
recorded human history. Anxious is
“worried”
or
“apprehensive.” American poetry, Americans.
Young, I
learned anyone born here could become
President.
Older, I can point to any one of a
hundred
reasons why
this is a lie. Anyway, I don’t want
to be
President, not
of a country, or club, not here or there,
not anywhere. He said, “I turned the car
around because
it began
raining bombs.” There’s no chance of ambiguity—
an as here could mean “because” or “when”;
it makes
no
difference—he saw the sky, felt the ground,
knew what would
come next; it matters little
when the heart
rate in less than a second jumps from
70 to 200 beats
per minute. What they did
to my
grandfather was awful—its
wretchedness,
awe-inspiring;
its cruelty, terrible; it was awfully
hard to forget.
Just after 8:46AM, I wondered awhile
what
would happen next. At 9:03AM, I knew
there
was going to be trouble for a while to
come.
When
in her grief the woman said, “We’re going
to
hurt them bad,” she meant to say,
“We’re going
to
hurt them badly.” For seventeen days,
during
air
strikes, my grandfather slept on a cot beside
a
kerosene lamp in the basement of his house. Besides
a
few days worth of pills, and a gallon of water,
he
had nothing else to eat or drink. Given these conditions,
none
of us were surprised that on the eighteenth day,
he
died. Besides, he was eighty-two
years old.
I
can write what I please. I don’t need
to ask, May I?
Like
a song: men with capital meet in the Capitol
in
the nation’s capital. Any
disagreements, censored;
those
making them—poets, dissenters, activists—
censured. The aftermath, approximately 655,000
people
killed. “The Human Cost of War in Iraq:
A
Mortality Study, 2002-2006,” Bloomsburg School
of
Public Health, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore,
Maryland);
School of Medicine, Al Mustansiriya University
(Baghdad,
Iraq); in cooperation with the Center
for
International Studies, Massachusetts Institute
of
Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts).
The
figure just cited—655,000
dead—resulted from
a
household survey conducted at actual sites,
in Iraq,
not
the Pentagon, or White House, or a newsroom,
or
someone’s imagination. Of course,
language has been
corrupted.
Look, the President, who speaks coarsely,
says,
“We must stay the course.” The
problem with
“Let
your conscience be your guide” is you
must first
be
aware, conscious, of the fact that a
moral principle
is
a subjective thing. I wonder: when one “smokes ‘em
out
of a hole,” if the person doing the smoking
is
conscious of his conscience at work. Am I fully conscious
of
how I arrived at this? The continual
dissemination
of
similar images and ideas. The continual
aired footage
of
planes striking the towers, the towers crumbling
to
the streets, dust, screams, a continuous
reel of destruction,
fear,
as if the attacks were happening twenty-four hours
a
day, every day, any time. For a while, I couldn’t
care less
about
war. Then I saw corpses, of boys, who looked
just
like me. This was 1982, at age ten. Ever since,
I
couldn’t care less why anyone would
want it.
In
1982, any one of those boys could have
been me.
Now,
it’s any one of those dead men could be me.
The
Secretary of State offered such counsel
to
the ambassadors of the world that the United Nations
Security
Council nodded in favor of war. Criterion
easily
becomes criteria. Even easier: to no
longer
require either. The data
turned out false. The doctrine
of preemption ultimately negated its need. While we
both speak English, our languages are so different from
each other, yours might as well be Greek to me.
When the black man in the park asked, “Are you
Mexican, Puerto Rican, or are you Pakistani?”
and I said, “I’m Arab,” and he replied, “Damn.
Someone don’t
like you very much,” I understood
perfectly what he meant. The President alluded
to the Crusades because of (not due to) a lack
of knowledge. Later, he retracted the statement,
worried it might offend the Middle East;
it never occurred to him the offense taken was due to
the bombs shredding them to bits and pieces. “You are
either with us or with the terrorists” (September
20, 2001).
“You’re either
with us or against us” (November 6, 2001).
The day after, the disc jockey advocated, on air,
a thirty-three cent solution (the cost of a bullet)
to the problem of terrorists in ur midst—he meant
in New York; also, by terrorists, I wonder, did he know
he meant cab drivers, hot dog vendors, students, bankers,
neighbors, passers-by, New Yorkers, Americans;
did he know he also meant Sikhs, Hindus, Iranians,
Africans, Asians; did he know, too, he meant Christians,
Jews, Buddhists,
Atheists; did he realize he was eliciting
a violent response, on the radio, in the afternoon?
Among those who did not find the remark at all illicit:
the owners of the radio station, the FCC, the mayor,
the governor, members of the House, the Senate,
the President of the United States. Emigrate is better
than immigrate.
Proof: no such thing as illegal emigration.
Further proof: emigration
is never an election issue.
I heard enthusiastic
speeches. They hate our freedoms,
our way of life, our this, that, and the other, and so on
(not etc). Not everyone agreed every one not “with us”
was “against us.” Detroit was farther from home
than my father
ever imagined. He convinced himself
soon after
arriving here he had ventured further
than he should
have. Fewer people live in his
hometown
than when he
left, in 1966. The number, even less,
following
thirty-four straight days of aerial bombardment.
First (not firstly) my
father spoke Arabic; second
(not secondly) he spoke broken English; third (not thirdly)
he spoke Arabic
at home and English at work;
fourth (not fourthly)
he refused to speak English
anymore. Not
every poem is good. Not every poem
does well. Not every poem is well, either. Nor does
every poem do good. “To grow the economy”
is more than
jargon. Can a democracy grow
without
violence? Ours didn’t. They still plan to
grow
tomatoes this
year, despite what was done.
Several men,
civilian workers, identified as enemies,
were hanged on a bridge, bodies torched,
corpses
swaying in the
breeze. Photographs of the dead
were hung with care. I can hardly describe what is
going on. Day
after day, he told himself, “I am
an American. I
eat apple pie. I watch baseball.
I speak
American English. I read American poetry.
I was born in
Detroit, a city as American as it gets.
I vote. I work.
I pay taxes, too many taxes. I own a car.
I make mortgage
payments. I am not hungry. I worry
less than the
rest of the world. I could stand to lose
a few pounds. I
eat several types of cuisine
on a regular
basis. I flush toilets. I let the faucet drip.
I have central
air-conditioning. I will never starve
to death or
experience famine. I will never die
of malaria. I
can say whatever the fuck I please.”
Even words
succumbed; hopefully turned into
a kind of joke;
hopeful, a slur. However, I use the words,
but less, with
more care. The President implied
compassion; but
inferred otherwise. This is not
meant to be ingenious. Nor is it ingenuous.
The more he got
into it, the more he saw poetry,
like language,
was in a constant state of becoming.
Regardless, or because of this, he welcomed the
misuse
of language.
Language is its own worst enemy—
it’s the snake devouring its
own tail. They thought
of us not kind of or sort of but as somewhat American.
Lie: “To recline or rest on a surface?” No. “To put
or place
something?” No. Depleted uranium, heavy
like lead; its use—uranium shells—led to birth defects.
When in his
anger the man said, “We’re going
to teach them a lesson,” I wonder what he
thought
they would learn. In a war, a soldier is less likely
to die than a
civilian. He looks like he hates our
freedoms.
You don’t know
them like I do. He looks as if he hates
our freedoms.
You don’t know them as I do.
When in his
sorrow my father said, “Everybody
loose in war,” I knew exactly what he meant. It may be
poets should
fight wars. Maybe then, metaphors—
not bodies, not
hillsides, not hospitals, not schools—
will explode. I
might have watched the popular sitcom
if not for my
family—they were under attack,
they might have died. Others may have been laughing
at jokes while
bodies were being torn apart.
I could not
risk that kind of laughter. Of all the media
covering war,
which medium best abolishes the
truth?
I deceive myself. I will deceive you myself. In the Bronx,
I passed as Puerto Rican. I passed as Greek in Queens,
also Brazilian,
Pakistani, Bangladeshi, even a famous,
good-looking
American movie actor. As Iranian
in Manhattan.
At the mall in New Jersey,
the sales clerk
guessed Italian. Where Henry Ford
was born, my
hometown, I always pass as Arab.
I may look like
the men in the great paintings
of the Near
East but their lives, their ways, I assure you,
are in the past. Plus, except in those paintings,
or at the movies,
I never saw Arabs with multiple wives,
or who rode
camels, lived in silk tents, drank from
desert wells; moreover, it’s time to move past that.
Did language precede violence? Can violence proceed
without
language? It broke my father’s heart
to talk about
the principle of equal justice.
The news aired
several quotations from the airline
passengers, one
of whom was a middle-aged man
with children,
who said, “I didn’t feel safe with them
on board.” He
used the word “them” though only one,
an Arab, was on
the plane. Being from Detroit,
I couldn’t help
but think of Rosa Parks.
Then I got
angry. I said to the TV, to no one
in particular,
“If you don’t feel safe, then you
get off the
goddamn plane.” You can quote me
on that. I was really angry—not real angry,
but really angry. The reason? A poet asked me
why I didn’t
write poems about Muslim and Arab
violence
against others, and I said I did. And then
he said he
meant violence against Americans and Israelis,
respectively, and I said I did, and before I could
go on he
interrupted to ask why I didn’t write
poems about
mothers who sent their sons and daughters
on suicide
missions. As if, as if, as if. I respectfully
decline to
answer any more questions. Write your own
goddamn poem!
Does this poem gratify the physical senses?
Does it use sensuous language? It certainly does not
attempt to
gratify those senses associated with
sexual
pleasure. In this way, it may not be a sensual
poem.
However, men
have been known to experience
sexual gratification
in situations involving power,
especially over
women, other men, life, and language.
My father said,
“No matter how angry they make you,
invite the agents in the house, offer them coffee,
be polite. If they stay long, ask them to sit. Otherwise,
they will try to set
you straight.” When in his
frustration he said, “Should
of, could of, would of,”
he meant, “Stop, leave me alone, I refuse to examine
the problem further.” Because (not since) the terrorists
attacked us, we became more like the rest of the world
than ever before. This is supposed to be a poem;
it is supposed to
be in a conversation with you.
Be sure and participate.
“No language is more violent
than another,” he said. Then he laughed, and said,
“Except the one you use.”
Do conflicts of interest
exist when governments award wartime contracts
to companies that have
close ties to government officials?
From 1995 to 2000, Dick Cheney, Vice President
of the United States, was CEO of Halliburton,
which is headquartered in Houston, Texas,
near Bush International Airport. Would they benefit
themselves by declaring war? Please send those men
back home. My
grandfather lay there unconscious.
For days, there was no water, no medicine, nothing
to eat. The
soldiers left their footprints at the
doorstep.
His sons and
daughters, they’re now grieving him.
“Try not to make too much of it” was the advice given
after two Homeland Security agents visited my
house,
not once, not
twice, but three times. I’m waiting for
my right mind.
The language is a long ways from
here.
After the bombs
fell, I called every night to find out
whether my father was alive or dead. He always
asked,
“How’s the weather there?” Soon enough, he assured
me,
things would
return to normal, that (not where)
a ceasefire was
on the way. Although (not while)
I spoke English
with my father, he replied in Arabic.
Then I
wondered, who’s to decide whose language it is
anyway—you, me?
your mother, father, books,
perspective,
sky, earth, ground, dirt, dearly departed,
customs,
energy, sadness, fear, spirit, poetry, God,
dog, cat,
sister, brother, daughter, family, you,
poems,
nights,
thoughts, secrets, habits, lines, grievances,
breaks,
memories, nightmares, mornings, faith, desire,
sex, funerals,
metaphors, histories, names, tongues,
syntax, coffee,
smoke, eyes, addiction, witness, paper,
fingers, skin, you, your, you’re here, there, the sky,
the rain, the
past, sleep, rest, live, stop, go, breathe
--Hayan Charara, from
Something Sinister. Go buy it!
