“Have
I suffered enough to be Middle Eastern?”
by Emily Ghazal
by Emily Ghazal
Have I suffered enough to be Middle Eastern?
My father says he has suffered enough in his life for the both of us,
and my children to come.
That his pain runs through my blood.
Roots that lay in violence and in fear, in soil fertilized with bullets and shellings.
I am never who I say I am,
I am always the other.
The house that my grandmother built only feels like home when fire runs through the mountains that surround it,
when muddy and ash covered boots are wiped across the welcome mat.
I hear my name in their sirens,
I feel my ancestors pass through me as I stand on that balcony,
telling me softly;
“Run to the streets, freedom asks you to find her.”
I speak my father’s tongue, I know his songs, his food, his skies, his suffering.
And yet, I feel like no part of it,
no part of him.
And so, I wrap myself in grand stories and tales of my country and her neighbors.
I try to convince myself I am one of them, one of the same.
But I know that I am not.
Maybe the apple falls far from the tree.
I know I have not lived like they have, with my European mother,
my little red European book.
I know I have not loved or hurt or bled like them.
I have not slept in rooms made of bullet pierced walls.
And as I write, I think;
how privileged am I to complain I have not felt their wounds,
how privileged am I to wish I had known their terror.
I do not wish for death, only for what comes after, amongst the ones that have lost.
My father says he has suffered enough in his life for the both of us,
and my children to come.
That his pain runs through my blood.
I cut myself open to find of what he speaks.
I know that I have suffered too,
but have I suffered enough to be Middle Eastern?
And when her grounds begin to tremble, I feel my body begging me to be there, my bones ache to be around my people;
to help, to listen, to mourn with them.
Instead,
I sit in my mother’s country, clutching on to my father’s flag.
I am comfortable where I lay, whilst my brothers and sisters fight for their freedom in countries that serve as battlegrounds.
When Beirut cries I cry with her,
I yearn for her tongue to tell me I belong in her arms.
In her warm embrace.
I yearn for her honey coated lips to kiss my forehead goodnight.
I wait for the day that I’ll feel her dirt underneath my fingernails,
for the day that I am buried beneath her cedar trees.