Rewa Zeinati – Guernica

Rooms

Listen: Your browser does not support the audio element.Click here for the mp3. 1. Some of us wake up to rooms and brewed coffee and the low clatter of spoons filling up the kitchen while the voice of an elderly pacing the street below our balcony begs allah allah allah like a drifting tune till we no longer hear him. 2. Here comes the fruit cart selling tangerines like tiny fists. Here comes the man who measures the weight of chestnuts only to burn them on a low fire. Everywhere, children are breastfeeding other children. 3. War within earshot and the sea the size of our lungs we choke on the bones of those who drowned and never arrived or never left/ /this Mediterranean overpass to nowhere. Sabah el khair are two words of a prayer. We used to think that refugees were of one kind and we never knew that we were too. 4. My aunt says a woman is like the soil, like the land, el maraa mitil el ard giving back despite the pounding of army boots and the blue fists of men on our skin. Giving back in orange groves and children even though her body couldn’t her land lost eighteen and forced to walk the length of exile to get here. 5. Here the streets are stray cats. The streets are gossip in the mouths of men. /Minarets creaking like old forgotten beds./ You say these men kill with their hands, their teeth, their swords, this is the way they open countries. You say you have no idea who their god is and why but you know exactly how only some of us wake up to rooms and brewed coffee to the low clatter of spoons filling up the kitchen like a cruel laugh in our chest—