Skip to main content

The voice

The voice is frequently drowned out, but never silenced.

It lives on amid the sneers of doomsayers; amid the trash littering every street; amid the sea of garishly painted faces and stretch pants.

It shrinks, yes, at every horrible thing that has become normal; at every proof of our failure. It winces at every pathetic trinket imported from China; at the vulgarities written on baby clothing and displayed by clueless shopkeepers; at the absurd cheers heard on every street when the home team scores a goal.

But it grows, too.

At each call to prayer, it gets a little bigger, and at every kind word or gesture. “See?” it says, nudging me when a young man offers me his seat on the bus – though the scar on his cheek says he’s been in a street fight. “Didn’t I tell you?” it murmurs when a taxi driver drops me off on the other side of a busy street so I don’t have to cross with my children.

And when my child picks up an Arabic book and reads it on her own, the voice tells me we made the right decision.

And like the steady recitation, beautiful and barely audible amidst the chaos of repulsive tunes, the voice whispers, “Perhaps we will rise again.”

(June 2016)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To school on a winter morning

I love the walks to school on winter mornings. The crisp weather, the leisurely stride, the friendly banter between my daughters and their cousin. Sometimes they link arms with her—not with each other, to be sure—and sometimes they take quick steps, trying to outpace each other. The puffy black jacket I bought a decade ago on another continent serves me well. Today, grey clouds loom above, but so far there is no rain. (It doesn’t take long for the streets to fill with water when it does rain, and then the walk turns into a delicate crisscrossing dance.) We’re approaching the school gate now. “Anyone want to hug and kiss me in public?” I quip. The girls politely decline, but they do say salam and “I love you.” I stand until they pass through the doors; both of them look at me and wave. I turn back, and soon I’m crossing a one-way road; I live in Egypt, so I look both ways. My way back is contemplative. I study all the greenery on my path—trees and bushes of various shapes and sizes. Som...
Post a Comment
Read more

The writer in me

The writer in me, nurtured at an early age but silenced in its prime by country-hopping, teaching, and babies —an occasional gasp for air its only reprieve from slow suffocation— longs to speak again. I've so much to say, it tells me, but you haven't been listening. Don't hold me back, it says by shopping, cooking, and lame excuses. Let me go, it says; let me speak. Ya Allah, strengthen my voice. (July 2018)
Post a Comment
Read more

Shoe hostages

You used to hide our shoes. It was your tried-and-true way of getting your nieces and nephews to sleep over. “Okay, kids, let’s go home now,” one of your siblings would say at the end of a visit. “But their shoes are nowhere to be found,” you’d say. “I guess they’ll just have to sleep over!” Your siblings would chuckle at this hostage-taking and relent. But not my dad. He’d demand the shoes be procured immediately. And what choice did you have but to listen to your older brother? You had no children of your own, and you spoiled us rotten. Love flowed freely from your heart, knowing no bounds. We saw it in the hours you spent telling us stories, in your home that was always open, in the milk you put out for strays, and in your endless batches of fried potatoes. They were legendary, those potatoes. I still don’t know why yours always tasted the best. My brother would eat a plateful all by himself, and you’d just laugh and go make more. You don’t make them anymore. The last time I saw you...
Post a Comment
Read more