Streets with Foreign Names
Appeared in a poetry collection Letters to the Holy Land, edited by Sara Aldweik and Maria Amiouni, 2024.
Exile from within and without - Streets without Names
By Khalil Sima'an
I.
Behind the back of our old house,
beneath a shady Carob tree,
my grandma had a banished throne,
her cloned miniature village
where she used to hide from foreign
folks settling native city streets
they had renamed with foreign names;
my grandma came from an erased
mountain village, its ancient streets
had never known a name, yet she
had never lost her farming ways
between the foreignized street names,
she named the native city streets
by the bright colours of buildings
and the names of organic things:
“The roundabout at the white church,
the one with two beheaded Palm
trees and a shady Sycamore,
idle cabs and village refugees.”
The hidden miniature village,
behind the mountainous behind
of a Carob tree, had a throne
beside two miniature meadows
lined up with sprigs, beans and chickpeas,
girding three village refugees:
an almond and two olive trees.
At the hottest time of the day,
cross-legged on her throne, grandma
lamented the bygone times, and rocked
and swayed her cradle of inner strain
and confusion; she rocked and swayed
and rocked and swayed, her pain and I
curled behind her, my arms and legs
tied together with the fibres
of her depression, lest I go
astray in streets with foreign names.
By the fiery age of fourteen
I inherited her cradle,
two royal miniature meadows
and three green fellow refugees;
I farmed the margins of eastern
streets with foreign western names;
before the sizzling summer heat
I harvested the onion sprigs
juicy and green, and battled like
a knight until I was stabbed
in the stomach by rebellious
beans and chickpeas; I hid myself
behind the house, and rocked and swayed,
rocked and swayed till I fell asleep,
or peeped at the swooping swallows
shrieking sky and sea into bits
and pieces, and penetrating
the fluffy groynes of swollen clouds.
I hid from armies roaming streets
renamed after foreign settlers
with the schemes of common thieves.
II.
At frigid northern latitudes
where Carob trees refuse to grow
and the swallows swarm and hide
behind the disfigured behinds
of mutilated memories,
I roam foreign streets with native
names, I avoid self-entitled gangs
occupying my native streets,
I farm idioms on white sheets,
day after day I rock and sway
and rock and sway and cultivate
miniature chronicles of distant
nameless roundabouts and a throne
behind the majestic behind
of a colonised Carob tree.
My twice exiled throne.