What if I was never here
أنا مغتربة
I am displaced.
If you search for me
in history books,
my name
would be imperceptible.
The historian knew I was here,
here I was
when he said to me:
once you leave the land
the land leaves you.
Damascus’ soil no longer
will recognize
my foot prints. An outlander
It would say as if I
wasn’t given
birth to
twenty minutes
from the heart of the city,
and lived and loved
and loved and lived
for 21 years.
Once you leave,
you are displaced. Misplaced
إبحث عني
What brought me here?
Who am I?
Where do I belong? I ask
myself every morning as I brush
my brown locks and blink
with eyes big,
an inheritance of Syrian ancestors.
My blood is Damascene, but my body
is lost.
Take me again and displace me
in the place I was first found,
lose me between jasmine
scented petals
on a hot summer day.
I see July
in Damascus,
a sun so high
I cannot reach.
Hot sellers squatting
outside of their shops
praying
for a cool breeze
يالله شو شوب
and someone to bargain.
Salam, to the passersby
اتفضل
They invite you for a cup of tea
boiled with sugar to give it
the sweetness
of the city.
أهلا و سهلا، اتفضل حبيبي كيف فيني أخدمك؟ شرفتنا.
Nour Al Ghraowi is a Syrian writer, activist, and educator. She has received a BA in English Literature at The University of Texas at Austin and pursuing an MFA in poetry at Texas State University. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Dame Magazine, So To Speak journal, Mizna Literary Journal, Echo Literary Magazine, and Porter House Review. Nour writes in hope of changing the Western view of the Middle East and the Arabic language that is often viewed as inimical. She also writes about Social Justice, migrant identity, and what it means to be an immigrant in an unwelcome place, and finally, she writes about feminism and what it means to be a feminist Middle Eastern woman.