Two poems today about my Tetah in honor of all Palestinian Tetah’s/grandmother’s – Keep the humanity alive. Never lose the ability to see the people in the face of the atrocities.
Tetah and Cede circa. 1937
TO ALL THE TETAH'S A Tetah is the pinnacle that reaches to the outskirts of the universe. An apex of love that is the highest order of being. When I see you in my dreams/ reaching toward me with open arms/ comforting me like the skin of my soft puppy playing against my heartbeat. This is chivalry/ this is King/ this is Queen of destiny. The beauty/ the colors/ a kaleidoscope/ a spectrum of lights fill the sky with spirit/ full-force and bright. I hold treasures in my heart/ my chest beats upon sheer memory. Warm fragile light recedes into the dark night/ palatable/ my tongue dancing with the delight in reaching toward the taste of this love. Your life—shadow/ distant yet burning. I struggle to materialize your spirit/ return it to me now! Angel eyes upon the ground/ your garden of loofah/ koosa/ eggplant/ hung heavy on vines like black-purple-gem-hearts/ full round and pressed to earth. Clinging from tree’s— the fig/ the peach and the herbs of life—your life/ entangled in my veins like weeds overgrown this is you. I recall vast lifetimes/ tracing a labyrinth to all the Tetah’s that have nurtured/ fed their grandchildren lovingly. A silent steady stream. A monumental mountain/ heavy on the landscape. This I see in a glimpse/ a sudden weighted gravity/ that pierces my heart/ as I sit in quiet memory of you my Tateh. Huge you were to my child eyes/ little you became as I grew with the grapevines. Small in frame/ yet huge in spirit/ you grew with each passing moment. Now—you are a giant in the Universe. I see the magnitude of you in the bright stars/ you in the heavens/ you loom large as the ink-black night and burn forever long as the day's light! All of this in a glimpse of you. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ HERE I STAND ON TORRID LAND here i stand on torrid land my spirit wandering the dusty sand of fig trees, khubz and floured hands i stand just foot driven deep in earth’s crust sure-footed grip of rocks and mortar my soul ripped in two by grief’s torture small hands grasped lightly by the remembrance of her soft dough-baked grip of salt, of land ancient yet present her cherub eyes danced table-side love, she spoon-fed her clan with grape leaves and olives and not so dainty meat pastries prepared from the vines, toiled by cede’s hand his backyard bounty, his dreams -- their dreams of their homeland and my dreams of hot cement days and barefooted children pretending the dawali are stacks of cigars stuffed and rolled, stacked high on big plates the dawali grew higher creating bigger heaps of make-believe fun time with cousins longing for the smells of dusty left behind relics that bespeak of them, their belongings the hookah, the 8 track tapes, belting out loud arabic music the robe and keffiyeh my grandfather wore not so long ago in ramallah, the curious one that later became a halloween costume worn by my childhood friend and that old oriental rug beaten by history splayed across the living-room floor, adding an air of the exotic to their mundane colonial suburban sofa the lamb and garlic stained air, smelt early at daybreak always there, lingering about oiled-hot-pots full, brimming with tomato broth baths and grown ups lamenting the evening news, the war, the fight for the return of their land, usurped by foreign man those that had suffered atrocities of their own have turned ugly, heaping nails, spitting bulldozers claiming god has promised this to them easily they slipped between tongues english and arabic at once they were here/there simultaneously they had created a new language, one easily understood by us and me, absorbing all this with my round brown eyes unaware of my future task silently inhaling the smoke of my family’s lingering rage, the kind of rage that clings to the walls, to the curtains, to the furniture, to me to my stuffed pink panther the one i loved so much for its unique shape and color the color of bubble gum and pink lemonade -- but the rage! the rage had to be scrubbed off the walls, scrubbed off the furniture scrubbed off my clothes, scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed! and i inherited this task unknowingly. ©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Free Palestine!
(Visited 2 times, 1 visits today)
