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.