(mother)land

The sun has risen and the memory of your voice is getting harder to reach.
I start remembering how my mother never wanted to leave.
She knew the harshness of the diaspora.
Me and my sister have no land- no place we can call home.
We are daughters full of questions.
Loving me is a war of conflict and land- I make homes out of people to make up for the one I do not have.
The child of the coloniser asks me why I left home.
I tell him there was a drought- that his fathers hands drained everything until our parents had to choose between not betraying their land and feeding our empty bellies.
I’m seven years old and my classmate asks me why my skin is so dark- is it because I eat too much chocolate.
I’m 15 years old and the white boy ‘accidentally’ says nigga in my presence-laughs.
I’m 17 years old and I move to my mothers land- thinking it was my mother land.
I’m now twenty one and my Arabic is still broken- still unsure of where I’m from.
The man that I love leaves his home and now I pray for my unborn children.
They will be birthed to a mother who’s heart is an orphan.
I guess my heart will always be in a state of limbo.
And I guess my land is the ocean.
I hope my daughter doesn’t inherit my need to make homes out of people.
Because their absence leaves scents stained with bittersweet memories.
I hope I can raise my son in a world where he will never have to shorten his name to fit in their mouths.
And my undying wish is that my children have a place they can call home.
I tried to fall in love with the place I was born but I was met with nothing but temporary infatuation.
I don’t know how to cry in their language so I avoid all funerals.
My grandmother thinks I’m cold because I’m quiet, because my tongue replaces confusion with silence.
I fell in love with a man full of country and home enough to fill my emptiness but he couldn’t feel my emptiness.
My heart is a bottomless pit, always craving to be filled.
And I start quoting Nizar Qabbani so he can try to understand.
‘How difficult it is my son,
To love a woman
Who has neither land nor home’