Mistika Poetry

I have been trying to keep my commentary to a minimum throughout this mess because we have just been trying to survive and push through the nightmare. But also because I am tired of repetitively running through this absurd narrative (in the age of information). I don't have sensible answers for the normal questions like, "who is fighting whom?", "how did it start?", "what do they want?", "what's going to happen next?". I don't know. We've never really known. As a geopolitical bridge between the tumultuous countries of the Middle East and Africa; and a deep well of resources bordered by volatility, this country has never been predictable or whole-- at least not in the political sense of the word as it extends to nation-states.

It is true, our faces have been muddied by wars, famine, drought, floods, corruption, and displacement. Yes, epidemics abandoned by most of the world in the 19th century, continue to plague our 21st century realities. But what is also true is this; I have not known my people to hold back where they can give. To love, laugh, and celebrate when they can. I want you to look at all the refugees of non-Sudanese origins as they pour out of Khartoum looking for a new safe haven. I want you to take this image as a metaphor for the single, undeniable truth you know about my country: We will carry our burdens alone, and carry your burdens with you. The land is abundant, and our hearts are extensions of it.

When Palestine's threads began to unravel at the seams, we crossed the Mediterranean and stood against the Zionists. Then we came back home carrying the dead and displaced Palestinians on our backs. They were welcomed into our homes, at our tables, and in our schools. When countries around us began to forget, close their borders, and shake hands with the enemy. We remembered. We continue to remember, and apologize for the Palestinians now fleeing back to Ghaza because our homes caught on fire. We hope you can come home to us again, and continue to build your careers and expand your degrees. To live, love, and prosper.

When Saddam invaded Kuwait, and the Arab governments took a moment to gasp. We were already marching across the Red Sea. We did not reprimand the Emirs of the Persian gulf for the politics that continue to leave them defenseless. We did not ask them why they allowed the devil to build so many bases on their land, or why they are still more afraid of a strong army of their own than they are of foreign 'boots on the ground'. They called for help and we came. We came with our children, our heartbreak, and our anger. Every time they call, we come.

When the Pharaoh in the north was uprooted, we celebrated. And when we saw the same tentacles of greed reach out from underneath the minarets, we yelled at the top of our lungs "beware of the Wolf with a beard and short gown. He memorizes the book of God, but does not know Him." I do not know if they heard us. But we yelled, and prayed, and yelled; "Protect your revolution. From the military, from the bearded Wolf." Even when we saw ourselves being sculpted into 'blackface' punchlines of their jokes, we yelled and prayed and yelled; "Protect your revolution. Do not let the media distract you, we know how this story ends." I do not know if they heard us. But we did not gloat as we saw our own plotline unfold underneath their roof.

When Libya fell to shambles and the Wolf came. We were around to pick up the pieces. For the first time in our collective memory, we saw numbers of our own children running off wearing explosive belts. We could not understand it. But we blamed and reprimanded ourselves before anyone else. We stood against our own for bringing someone else's war to innocent people's doorsteps.

When the Syrian roof caught on fire, we did not ask who was at fault. We only readied our borders for the Syrians fleeing destruction. We welcomed them into our homes, and gave them the best of us. We broke bread with them, and always gave them the bigger piece of the loaf. They complained that our bread was stale and our house was untidy. So we learned to make Shawarma with them, and plait hair the way they like. No one called them refugees or grumbled at their numbers. Our borders remained fluid, and they were welcomed as you would an old friend who was coming to visit after a long time away.

When we heard the Ethiopians raise their voices in dispute at our borders, we rushed to the East. We hugged them through it all as we pressed the sheets and made their beds next to ours. 'Lay here tonight. At least you are well, at least you have come home safe', we said. 'Rest now, tomorrow we will figure out what comes next together.'

Throughout this, the war(s) had never really stopped at home. South Sudan has been a bleeding wound in our lungs. Darfour was burning, and the Nuba mountains were crumbling. We dropped our children off at school, and saw their bodies float back to us lifeless in the Nile's rage. Our north drowned under flimsy dams, as our South tried to sew a new border together with threads of flesh and needles of blood. Our sons were killed in their sleep, and our daughters were violated in mosques because they wanted to sing a better future into being. You see the Lebanese fuel crisis, the inflation in Egypt, the war and famine of Yemen, and the chaos of Libya? We have lived through it. We never got a break from the violence of our leaders, the anger of the earth, or the tears of the Nile. But we will continue to carry our burdens alone, and carry your burdens with you. We were born to this wealthy land with wealthy hearts and emptied hopes. We have never really understood the point of "doors" or "borders", because this land that has birthed our heritage has always been a land of abundance and endless giving.

The thing about healing is, it gets invariably worse before it gets better.

Not because it's painful. No, the pain is familiar. The pain is a friend you never hoped you'd meet. The pain has always been there with you, walking you into rooms where every face is a stranger; tucking you into bed; waking with you-- within your bones like a million stray bullets in a rifle... The war, your blood. You, your only frightening enemy. All this you know like hunger knows poverty. What's worse is what you don't know.

They hear: I am a child's laughter,

Or what springtime mornings feel like-

When winter's window falls and you can finally touch the sun's rays

with the back of your arm.

I mean: It's the other one that terrifies me.

I say, Azraīl and I are old friends

who have been at this tango for a while now.

They hear: I am a dervish who twirls in the haremlik of the Divine, in frenzy-

Or, I know how to dance between the seventh sky and the here-and-now very well.

I mean: his scathe has been dancing around my neck for a decade.

I say, I think about sui**de more than I'd like.

They hear: I have a soft heart that stutters in the memory of all the oceans, the bullets, the ropes, the leaky car exhausts, and the train tracks that were transformed into highways to Earth's belly.

I mean: Google has tired of flashing "988 HELP IS AVAILABLE" on the top of my search pages; it just tells me how to build the highways now.

I say, growing old does not seem fun.

They hear: I am afraid of arthritis, stooped backs, and hearing aids.

I mean: I hope age stops counting before I do.

I say, I don't want to be here anymore.

They hear: in this room, in this country, in this century.

I have a wound the size of my country

Or

My wounds are the size of my country

Or

My country is a wound...

In every scenario the wound

is an open terrain of pain

that lays under the sun

and stretches its toes out

to tease the Mediterranean

In every scenario the sand

is blood red and everywhere,

and my grandmother lays it into my wounds;

says her mother's mother taught her

that coffee and sand help the skin

seal better...

In every scenario I am born

to this place

where everyone loves God

and praises His Name

for this forsaken home

for this tired skin

and all this sun and suffering.

In every scenario the earth shakes,

the walls collapse, and the rubble roars

in unison under the resistance

of my country's men and women

when they march into the barrels of guns

and rip their freedom out

from the belly of the sun

that meant to burn them alive

or abandon them to an endless night.

In my mother tongue,

Eid El-fitir translates to massacre

because when Ramadan was about to welcome the coming of sugar coated cookies

baked in the ovens of a free and just Sudan

the bullets came

the fire ate

and God took...

and this is how

my country is a revolution.

It erases and rewrites history

and language in a moment of rage.

Now, on the eve of every full moon

at the end of every ramadan

the earth swells with blue.

No one knows if this is the color

of the oceans flooding to

wash blood out of the sand's color

Or

if it is the sky gushing open

and swallowing us whole

with light and clouds

because it has become

too heavy with martyrs

Or

if it is just our tears

finding their way back to us

because they have nowhere else to go

Not when the Nile's belly

is brimming and full of bodies

emptied of their dreams

for this forsaken home

for this tired skin

and all this sun and suffering.

شهدانا ما ماتوا

عايشين مع الثوار

شهدانا ما ماتوا

عايشين مع الثوار

I have a wound the size of my country

Or

My wounds are the size of my country

Or

All the love in the world

for those forgotten by time

Those who threw the first stone into the lake and asked the ripple to become rain

for the drought

eating away at the bones

of the street children

and the men with idle hands

and waiting for eyes,

calling موقف جاكسون:

their غربة...

This

طلبجي with an engineering degree

This

سواق امجاد with a stethoscope around his neck

This

سواق ركشة with the dust of crayons under his nails and the scent of milk still fresh on his breath

No

night sky big enough for all their dreams

No

plane ticket they can afford to trade for the face of their mothers on a prayer mat,

fingers thinning around a weary roasary, raised to the night sky in pleas and سبحان اللهs and الحمدللهs

And now يا الله ترحمه يا الله... يا الله شوفته والرسول

She

still smells the بخور of rubber bullets catching fire...

يا عديلة يا بيضة يا ملايكة سيري معاه

لي دار الشهداء لي باب رب السما

My country hums a hymn

Calls it a wedding song

Played on the dawn our bravest kneeled to the ground and proposed to عَزة

With no ring no جدلة for her holy head

And she, queen of the Nile

Asked them if they'd lay their souls

in prostration to God

Call it her مهر...

But before they could say yes,

Before they could sing that Wardi song,

where you don't know if he's singing a balad of love for Sudan or his lover...

The bullets came

The bullets came

The bullets came

I was never particularly in love with my job. It just paid the bills. I did not enjoy being a cork in the machinery of the corporate world. Waking up every morning to check my emails. Logging in the court orders for all the employees who would now see less of their paychecks because a company they owed money to now decided to garnish their wages. Sifting through document after document to make sure another company got no more, and no less than what the court allowed in a subpoena order. Pouring over a new contract for a word that could cost the company a few hundred thousand dollars, should the designated person sign on the designated line. Calling one Union representative after another to let them know when their respective unionized employees would see the extra cents they bargained for with their nails and teeth. Reading union contract after union contract and translating it into numbers the company could tuck away into its pockets to push more and more people out of unions. Soul-sucking work for a self-proclaimed democratic socialist like myself. But it paid the bills.

When COVID-19 hit Wuhan, the Chinese government quickly locked down the city, sterilized the streets, and stabilized its stocks market. The U.S. did not. A few weeks after working from home became the new norm, I watched the stock market fall into shambles, and I knew it was a matter of time before another recession unfolded. Hundreds of thousands of industries were not equipped to work remotely, and others relied on daily profit. Not to mention the fact that service industries, such as beauty, production, and food markets would see a huge decline in their income, not only because their mode of operation had drastically changed, but also because in times of crises it is human nature to want to save and cut spending on what are considered “luxury items”. Things that could wait until the clouds of the storm have passed.

I was trying to take a nap at noon when the email came. “Shahd,” my boss wrote, “due to the current economic instability our departments have been asked to take quick action. You will be laid off effective March 31st to May 1st... You will continue to receive company benefits and healthcare”. I had received a message a few minutes prior from my manager asking how I was “holding up”. I replied “meh”, turned off my screen and went back to sleep. In an hour I woke up to finish my work. My manager had texted a heartfelt apology saying she was not aware the company was doing this and that she hoped they could get me back as soon as possible. I thanked her, responded to emails, logged in court orders, supported my colleagues, and replied to my boss “I understand, thanks”. After the day was over and done with, I turned out the lights, went back to bed, held myself, and cried. It is a terrible thing to feel so dispensable. A terrible thing to be pitied. I knew I was not going to die of starvation. I knew I would not lose my home. I had no children to support. I really had no reason to feel this bad. I had enough experience to find another job, should I want to skip the wait. But I did. I felt terrible. And small. I had not been “unemployed” since I was seventeen. I did not know what it meant to not to be working for too long. Even as I was a young high school student, with no responsibility for anyone but myself, and no bills owed but to my next meal out with friends… I had a job. I paid taxes. I identified as someone who earned an income. And perhaps realizing that, at that moment, was the most painful reckoning yet. I had become my worst nightmare. I was my job. The same job I hated. I had become nothing more than my paycheck. So, I cried. I cried because I had been furloughed. I cried because I felt this bad for being furloughed. I cried when my mother, my brother, my sisters, and my father came and tried to comfort me. I cried when they offered to help, because I had always been the one to split my last $10, or take another job behind my parents’ backs, just to help my siblings pocket some change. When times got tough, I got tougher. I found a way… I sold something… I covered the bills… I bailed my family out… But now I cried…

When I was a young girl of nineteen, in my third year of college, I remember vowing to my friend over the phone, that I would not yield my neck to the chains of capitalism. I was a fierce fire that ate everything that opposed it back then. I had a straight spine, a loud voice, and a sharp mind. I was also very young and naïve. Once I graduated, I was perhaps going to take a job that made some good money, just to pay the bills, and then I was going to claim my destiny. This is what I told myself. But as time passed, I realized that there was no way to get through capitalism but to go through it. To walk through its burning flames with all your open skin. There is no way to poke at the bear from the sidelines, when you owe the bear debt in the form of student loans. You will have to dance with the devil if you want to become anything, if you want to save anything… least of all yourself. This is what that young girl of nineteen did not know. This is what the virus has taught me. The worst thing that can happen is not losing the race, it is losing yourself in the race.

When the world collapses, there is no loud noise. No collision of the plates underneath the ground that brings trees and men tumbling down. The sky does not turn an unlikely color or break and fall. The Earth just rotates on its axis, around the sun, and ever so slowly single grains of sand start to disperse into the universe from underneath the Band-Aids on a cracked corner of the planet. Then all at once, the world as we know it crumbles… and nothing is the same. This is how the world fell at its knees when CoVID-19 came.

No one anticipated the impact that an illness in an industrial town across the globe would have on the world. China had always seemed like a faraway place with too many people, sharing too little space, clinging on to a very archaic poly-economic system. It was the “other” where everything seemed to come from, but no one really knew what the people who made up this busy universe of everything-ness were up to; and perhaps this was the way the government hoped to keep things indefinitely. Of course, this would have dire consequences on the future of everyone else, but when did one state look out for the wellbeing of humanity beyond its borders?

And so, within a month, a little pathogen, barely visible to the human eye, would cripple the entire city of Wuhan. The world would watch, shrug its shoulders, and say “It is not our problem” … except it quickly becomes their problem, thanks to how interconnected and globalized our world is. Airports shut down first. Then markets and stores. Then homes. The corpses pile up… and the planet breathes in and smiles at the near absence of the human footprint that follows. Soon enough, distance becomes the new norm. Being absorbed with the light shining from within the screens of our tiny handheld devices would become a welcome way of living. Time would move very quickly, the sun would dip in and out of the sky, but for all intents and purposes, it would seem like the earth has come to a halt. As if it is standing on its toes in the middle of the galaxy, holding its breath, afraid to exhale... lest its next breath come out in the shape of a cough.

أحببته كحب النحل لرحيق زهرة المليون

وشذى الربيع

حتى اشتت الدنيا

وتاهت كل سبل العودة اليّ

الى الخلية

اليّ

وهبت نفسي للمسافات

فصار البحر اهلي

والرحيل موطني

وهو أنايَّ الذي يعصف بقلمي

إكتُبيني ثم الدغي القادمين ليغازلوا ابتسامتك

دندنيني نغما على اذني عاشقيك

اعزفني ارقصيني ارسميني وشما

على كل من دق باب صدرك العتيق

ثم الدغيهم يا نحلتي

وارقدي بتأني على نسمات التمني

واطلبي السماح من الوقت

ان يرجع

ان أغفر

ان اطلق صراح حبك

ان يتعلم النحل الا يغامر

The world crumbles to ash around you and you retreat to sit inside yourself and touch the sky in the heights of your mind. Here the pain cannot reach you; the rust, the wreckage, the neediness of the people who take, and take, and take without stopping to ask if you are okay to give any more of yourself; the abandonment in the storms; all of it cannot find you. Here you are alone with the voices of your beloved. Mustafa, Fairuz, your grandmother... your sweet, sweet grandmother. She is here with the fresh scent of mango skin on her fingers, and olive oil glistening off the braid that climbs from her lower back to the part that splits her head like Moses did the Red Sea. She has left her post in heaven to pull you up on her lap, shelter you from the dunya, and comb the length back into your chopped-up hair. She kisses your exposed neck, then scolds you for having your back open like the French did in World War II; then hums in your mother tongue:

سألتك بألذي ركز الأرض معبد

وسوى الناس عليها مقام

سألتك بي كبيداتن و دعواتنا

شليل وين راح؟

شليل وين راح؟

يكون ضل الخريف فاتنا...

شليل وين فات؟...

Like Jack's beanstalk, your hair grows down to the center of your back, returning to the richest it has ever been before you started using it as a metaphor for life's problems and avoidance; and you are seven again. You return to a time before you knew how to lock doors from your mother. You know where the prayer mat lives, tucked behind the clay water zeers in your grandfather's veranda. You do not completely understand what all the words of the ritual mean, but when you bend your knees and touch your forehead to the ground you still believe God is listening and that you are worth being saved...

شليل وينو

اكلو الدودو

شليل وين راح

اكلو التمساح

Your grandmother finishes plaiting your hair after you have washed your faces with Amens and tries to slip you off her lap... you only turn sideways to look at her smiling eyes and trace your small fingers over her pink lips. You tell her you are Shileil now and tell her about the crocodiles. You tell her you understand all her lullabies and how the comprehension keeps you awake... your fingers grow, and you see your weight in her eyes bring her laughter. She hugs you and brings your shoulder to hers, so you are standing now. You don't remember being able to touch your chin to the nape of her neck this easily before. You do not know whose wetness is watering whose shoulders because your cheeks touch too closely, and both your eyes are twinkling when you look at her. Maybe you are both crying, maybe your tears are a curtain. You can feel a breeze on your neck again, and she closes her arms around it to bring your ear closer to her lips so she may whisper your name... Shahd.

Shahd... That is your name. I crossed the Red Sea to watch as they slaughtered the lamb offered to God on your naming ceremony. Not Shileil... Shahd. and Honey can never again become water my pure darling... even if it wanders in the belly of a bee, roams the earth, looking for a hive in the eye of a winter storm. No season can strip the pollen of its sweetness. Do not let your wanderlust strip you of your name. Water is Water. Shileil is lost. You are Shahd.

The world crumbles to ash around you and you retreat to sit inside yourself and touch the sky in the heights of your mind... you catch a cloud and it bursts into rain, pouring into the mouth of a valley...

Shileil - شليل: (S.)noun-Arabic conjugated word meaning waterfall/path of a water in the valley; (dialectical) in Sudanese folklore it is the name of a lost boy; eaten by a crocodile; eaten by earthworms.

_______

Translation of Arabic Text:

Poem by Al-Gadal// Bagool Ghunwat

I ask you in the name of He,

who has grounded the earth a temple

and balanced the people atop it, landmarks

I ask you, in the name of all our mothers' fairy tales and our prayers

I ask you, in the name of the heart of their hearts and our prayers

Where has Shileil gone to?

Where has Shileil gone to?

Can it be that autumn has strayed its path and left us behind?

And where has Shileil left to?

Children's song

Where is Shileil?

The dudu (earthworm) ate him

Where is Shileil

The crocodile ate him

This wind that brought you here,

settled you in between my skin and bones,

made a home for you in this body I carry around looking for a fire to burn it alight

Did it know?

Did it know I was all water and salt?

Did it mean to stir me up into a hurricane?

Or was it all a coincidence?

That it would sweep you onto my front yard and leave

leave you here,

you here, always,

like Katrina

13 years later and it is still an open wound in the flesh of New Orleans

still a heartache of what-if's and maybe's

still here in the middle of this forsaken city that just wants to make jazz and find laughter

and I don't even want to make jazz

I just want to laugh like I don't carry this stupid big heart

Bandaid 1

I put a bandaid on the Atlantic and wait

for it to dry up the blood and tears

in the wound that is my homesickness

I wait for everything I have loved

and lost

and still love

to be an arm's length away,

like maybe then the sound of my homeland's rejection slap

won't echo loud enough to hurt

Bandaid 2

يا مولاي بشكيلك شقاي و غُلبي

حظي الديمة من رِد الأنيس جافلبي

طالت السفرة وانحفت مناسم تلبي

هب الريم و عاودك الحنين يا قلبي

يا مولاي آه من غُلبي

من النار وحرقت قلبي

يا مولاي

In my mother tongue,

we call our beloved أنيس//anees

meaning the one whose company brings your heart peace and serenity and joy

who chases away the fear in your bones, and quiets the longing in your shivering fight-or-flight drenched heart

but also means a place with no one to claim it, empty, and haunted, and unwanted

And I think, what a befitting way to call on the place that gave me this language.

سوداني يا انيسي

Bandaid 3

The night crawls out of my pockets

And puts a bandaid under my eyes

So you do not see the riddled questions I carry in these bags

I do not cry the name of my pain into existence

because a name is what makes the fetus a child, makes the statistic a person, makes the quiet a funeral prayer, makes the hurt a grieving, makes the jitters anxiety, makes the emptiness depression, makes the tears that do not come a problem, makes this insomnia everything that I do not want it to be

"Why do you look so tired all the time?"

I just have trouble sleeping.

"Try turning your data off and just close your eyes, focus on breathing."

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Here come Self-doubt. Exhale. Here come the insecurities. Inhale. Exhale. Exhale. Here comes the anxiety. Inhale. Inhale. Inhale. Pick up phone and look for a bandaid.

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