Slowly, you forget the stone church where your great-
grandmother murmured Aramaic blessings for the Virgin,
and you start to think all Syrians are like
the Sunni Arab ones at your Manchester mosque
In the Chicago Syrian doctor’s club,
Black Syrians too poor to emigrate slip from sight
Post-1965 the U.S. filtered you by class, welcomed
your light-skinned college-boy dad, but left behind
Kurdish farmers in Sere Kaniye—which
you think is only called Ras al-Ayn. You overlook
that Assyrians might feel out of place
among your exiled Ikhwanji neighbors
at your corporate compound in Riyad
Living in Mecca, how often do you face-
to-face Yezidi Syrians? You start to imagine
that Alawites have horns, forget
your teen crush on the coastal girl beach-bred
You no longer daily see ‘Uqqal of the Jabal
born and reborn. Your kids
and Syrian Turkmen kids
in diaspora keep separate kitchen-table languages
It slips your mind that Armenians are home in Syria too
Your grandkids mistake singer Omar Souleyman for “khaleeji”
but think Asala “looks Syrian”
Together, you watch Bab al-Hara over fajitas
from the Dallas superstore, and misremember
a Syria filled only with people like you
Mohja Kahf (born 1967) Syria (lives in USA)
Source: Mizna online
khaleeji - a term that describes people from the Arabian gulf
grandmother murmured Aramaic blessings for the Virgin,
and you start to think all Syrians are like
the Sunni Arab ones at your Manchester mosque
In the Chicago Syrian doctor’s club,
Black Syrians too poor to emigrate slip from sight
Post-1965 the U.S. filtered you by class, welcomed
your light-skinned college-boy dad, but left behind
Kurdish farmers in Sere Kaniye—which
you think is only called Ras al-Ayn. You overlook
that Assyrians might feel out of place
among your exiled Ikhwanji neighbors
at your corporate compound in Riyad
Living in Mecca, how often do you face-
to-face Yezidi Syrians? You start to imagine
that Alawites have horns, forget
your teen crush on the coastal girl beach-bred
You no longer daily see ‘Uqqal of the Jabal
born and reborn. Your kids
and Syrian Turkmen kids
in diaspora keep separate kitchen-table languages
It slips your mind that Armenians are home in Syria too
Your grandkids mistake singer Omar Souleyman for “khaleeji”
but think Asala “looks Syrian”
Together, you watch Bab al-Hara over fajitas
from the Dallas superstore, and misremember
a Syria filled only with people like you
Mohja Kahf (born 1967) Syria (lives in USA)
Source: Mizna online
khaleeji - a term that describes people from the Arabian gulf
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