Hala Alyan
In Jerusalem
Forgetting something doesn’t change it.
In Jerusalem a man blocked the door in front of a hostel
to tell me to unpin my hair. I did,
but then kept the story from anyone for years.
There are times I can see the bus stops clear as day,
the jasmine soap I bought from the Armenian quarter,
how I rewatched an episode of The Wire in bed
the first night, afraid if I left my room I would lose it.
That summer I was lousy with photographs―
church pews, skinny trees. A single one
of myself, peeking into a mirror. My hair over one eye.
Sometimes I wonder if the man even asked,
if I am misremembering, whether I am the culprit
of my own fear. But then I remember the two pairs of shoes
I wore through the soles that trip, how I finally walked barefoot
down the Mount of Olives until a cab stopped for me,
speaking in English first, then Arabic,
asking if I’d like to see photographs of his granddaughter,
telling me to write a story about him. The city was all men.
But he was kind and eager and gave me ka’ak
to eat, calling me asfoura when I picked it apart
with my fingers. Bird. You eat like one.
What should I name you in the story, I asked.
Land remembers like a body does. A city full of men
still has a mother. I told myself I disliked Jerusalem
but that was code for couldn’t shake it. I was capable of too much.
I cursed the heat and cried on the way to the airport.
There never was another story. When I got back home,
I cut my hair, then dreamt I buried my grandmother
under Al-Aqsa mosque, but she hadn’t even died yet.
Gospel: Texas
Poison ivy I
never got. My grandmother
asking the Burger King cashier
for pommes frites.
First shooting
star. First silverfish. First carrot
in snowball. Kansas on the
weekends, the blade
of I-35. Permission slips.
My mother
dressing me as a
pilgrim for a school trip.
Arabic word for girl
longer than
English word for
no. First valentine card.
First grasshopper.
The seventeen windows
of that simulated
colonial town,
peering in every
single one. Pretending
the air we churn
is butter.
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian American writer and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in Poetry, Guernica and other literary journals. Her poetry collection ATRIUM was awarded the 2013 Arab American Book Award in Poetry, while her latest collection, HIJRA, was selected as a winner of the 2015 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and published by Southern Illinois University Press. Her debut novel, SALT HOUSES, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her website can be found at www.halaalyan.com and she resides in Brooklyn.
Return to January 2018 Edition
Forgetting something doesn’t change it.
In Jerusalem a man blocked the door in front of a hostel
to tell me to unpin my hair. I did,
but then kept the story from anyone for years.
There are times I can see the bus stops clear as day,
the jasmine soap I bought from the Armenian quarter,
how I rewatched an episode of The Wire in bed
the first night, afraid if I left my room I would lose it.
That summer I was lousy with photographs―
church pews, skinny trees. A single one
of myself, peeking into a mirror. My hair over one eye.
Sometimes I wonder if the man even asked,
if I am misremembering, whether I am the culprit
of my own fear. But then I remember the two pairs of shoes
I wore through the soles that trip, how I finally walked barefoot
down the Mount of Olives until a cab stopped for me,
speaking in English first, then Arabic,
asking if I’d like to see photographs of his granddaughter,
telling me to write a story about him. The city was all men.
But he was kind and eager and gave me ka’ak
to eat, calling me asfoura when I picked it apart
with my fingers. Bird. You eat like one.
What should I name you in the story, I asked.
Land remembers like a body does. A city full of men
still has a mother. I told myself I disliked Jerusalem
but that was code for couldn’t shake it. I was capable of too much.
I cursed the heat and cried on the way to the airport.
There never was another story. When I got back home,
I cut my hair, then dreamt I buried my grandmother
under Al-Aqsa mosque, but she hadn’t even died yet.
Gospel: Texas
Poison ivy I
never got. My grandmother
asking the Burger King cashier
for pommes frites.
First shooting
star. First silverfish. First carrot
in snowball. Kansas on the
weekends, the blade
of I-35. Permission slips.
My mother
dressing me as a
pilgrim for a school trip.
Arabic word for girl
longer than
English word for
no. First valentine card.
First grasshopper.
The seventeen windows
of that simulated
colonial town,
peering in every
single one. Pretending
the air we churn
is butter.
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian American writer and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in Poetry, Guernica and other literary journals. Her poetry collection ATRIUM was awarded the 2013 Arab American Book Award in Poetry, while her latest collection, HIJRA, was selected as a winner of the 2015 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and published by Southern Illinois University Press. Her debut novel, SALT HOUSES, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her website can be found at www.halaalyan.com and she resides in Brooklyn.
Return to January 2018 Edition