Iftah Ya Simsim

In the streets of Al Nasiriyah
or was it Al Nassriyah?
Nasriyaah?
Bhai jaan, do you remember the bougainvillea vine
escaping our spiked garden wall?

The only son in the family
after maghrib you walked to the corner store
for freshly baked bread

What was it called Bhai jaan?
I forget

honeyed whole wheat
soft and warm like Ammi’s face on the days she chose to smile

They chased you as you ran home

the same boys hurled stones at us
with the righteousness of the permitted
“Hindi baba go home!”

Bhai jaan, I still wonder
who is Hindi Baba?
Did they mean Hindu babu?
Or bibi?

I imagine her as one of many nannies
beating wings against a marble drenched House of Saud

days spent living just outside the frame
a body with temporary papers
never quite in focus

Does she send back remittance payments
wrapped in endearments to her children?
meri pyari beti meri jaan

Do they screen her mail?
redact truth
continue to claim she’s “part of the family”

Bhai jaan, wasn’t there an Oum Kalthoum ballad
about a woman lost?
Or was it Fairuz?

Remember how they always played those old songs on TV
between Arabic Sesame Street
“Iftah ya Simsim abwabak, nahn-ul-atfaal…”

and the evening news
which never mentioned the Filipina maids
found dead at a construction site in downtown Riyadh
or the stoning of that woman in chop chop square
we stumbled across when shopping in the souk

I can’t understand the songs anymore Bhai jaan

despite Mrs. Leila’s daily school beatings
the letter ayn still wants to catch in my throat
my tongue a rebellion against the Arabic they forced us to learn

Bhai jaan
memories ghost by
trailing faint traces of blossoms
from the orange tree in the corner

I cannot remember when exile became home

Name Her Churail

Churail near a hill station. Churail in the jungle. Churail in the forest. Churail on a lonely path. A road in the dark. No one around for miles. Accosts a man. Accosts every man. Accosts every pious man. Is every man pious? Is maleness piety? Churail on a deserted path. A road forsaken by morality. Baarish suffocating the horizon. A pious man walks innocently down a road. Surrounded by the quiet bones of the night. Suddenly, a churail accosts him. A churail with breasts bared and heaving. Miles of bloodied nails clawing the air. Hair writhing and slithering. Reshmi zulfein running wildly into the sky. Red silk sari ripped to shreds. Eyes full of hunger and fury. There on the deserted road in the jungli darkness she allegedly accosts a pious man. A man who comes across a woman simply standing in the middle of a lonely street and names her, Churail.

Amal Rana is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet and teaching artist living on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories . Her writing has appeared in multiple journals and anthologies, including: Room Magazine, Canadian Theatre Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Adrienne: A Poetry Journal for Queer Women, Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Feminist Wire, and more. One of her poems was recently featured in Split This Rock’s Poem of the Week series. Amal collaborates with multiple communities to vision decolonial futures through the arts. Find out more at rosewaterpoet.com.

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