To make بيت in a بيت

a poem about home

There’s a lot going on in the world and it’s been a little hard to articulate the many thoughts I have into prose for today. Instead, we try something a little different today : a poem I wrote just before the pandemic began. I was in New York for study abroad, homesick for Abu Dhabi as I recalled the word بيت in Arabic class many years ago and how it still feels foreign to me. At the same time, I was watching a documentary for a class on Mahmoud Darwish and Darwish said this:

“In the Arabic language, there is a beautiful and rare homonymy between the poetic verse and the house, where in Arabic, a poetic verse is called a house  (بَيْت) and it is as if a person can live in this house.”

-  As the Land is the Language , Dir. Simone Bitton, pref. Mahmoud Darwish.  France 3 documentaries, 1997 (translated from Arabic by Tom Abi Samra and Hoor Al Nuaimi)

This quote inspired the poem you’ll read now. I am not sure if I can tell you if I figured out what home is yet. Watching world events unfold around the globe, I do know that for many people, home is what they were forced to leave or risk their lives to protect because it is so much more than just a word.

  To make بيت in a بيت 

بيت the word

means; വീട്, घर, home.
with بيت , these–are the words I carry on my shoulders,   
 a weight, I wonder, like the concrete blocks carried 
by the backs of people before me to make you, 
my city, Abu Dhabi–
many a time 
I have tried to give you my names for home
But you block my voice as if you
have not heard my first cry echo in your chest

 بيت
 even in my perfect pronunciation
that my tongue strained itself for you
it is not my place to use it: you state			
why would not carry my–

بيت					
means: a line of poetry
in you, I and my generation 
collect words for home, yearning to keep them 
somewhere safe, with our bodies but 

no land, no nation, no state wants either–how funny,
these patriotic words  handed to us by them 
And you do not hear them either–so
nothing, we trust.

We send our words written in their scripts as paper dhows 
into Kadalamma’s hands, who tell me
my kadalkutti, you know what to do.

so I makes flat(s) 105 and 1703 a couplet to frame 
the poem I make of you, with verses made
from Najda street pauses and Mussafah vastness,
led by the refrain of Kadalamma’s corniche waves,
coloured with the soft yellow of 			   	
 		sheikh zayed road streetlights, with a gold twinkle
 from hamdan street– 

make syntax
 in which I, this ghost gulf child,
wrap my tongue through h and o and m and e to remember
Acha’s attempts to draw the blueprint of a വീ and ട് in desert sand
and Amma humming along to her youth’s music of घ and र

and my people, given labels and oil and blocks to carry but no archive 
and my fellow gulf kids, born singing voiceless anthems in 
a new silent tongue to a utopia with no borders–

I carve a space for them 
in the curves of  ب and ي and ت 


References: 
Kadalamma: Sea mother. A mythical figure from a common Malayali folklore, she is the sea and controller of natural forces
Kadal kutti: sea child

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