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
ഓരോരുത്തർക്കും ഓരോ കടൽ (കാട്ടു) പാത, കടൽ (ആത്മ) കുട്ടീ.
Happy to see the frame you draw, which demands certain attention.
Enjoyed بيت في البيت
Beautiful ...lovable...painful....