Ruz
BY MAJDA GAMA
Sometimes a sack of rice is full of rice,
not filled with a breathing body.
The body of a young girl transported
to the safety of a mountain home,
rocked by camelback away
from her sieged city with every sway.
Sometimes the concert halls are open &
the young girl is a young woman
with marcel waves, a gap
in her teeth & Cairene clothes. Rice
stops coming down the Suez Canal
when the British seize the thoroughfare.
She hears the mountains are misting
over her city, back home, as they do
in the spring. The sleep of summer
rooftops arriving in letters
from cousins with a new country
inscribed on the envelope. Sometimes,
pictures arrive of family
in Hijazi dress, their new nationality
still a costume to try on: black
silks in the summer. Some women
will keep their white scarves. Some
years they posed their sons for pictures,
costumed them in stiff, velvet Ottoman suits,
child-sized swords belted to boy-waists.
Once, a girl entered a wedding hall
at midnight. A great-aunt at her side,
dark waves coiled in her hair, in
their borrowed country of Egypt.
The bridal couple sat very still,
propped up on a stage beneath flood lights.
On every dressed table there were pots
of coffee, seeds, & sweets. A waiter
gestured her over to the couple’s moon-
sized platters of feast rice.
Countries Yet To Exist
BY MAJDA GAMA
1.
There were countries yet to exist
Along the trade route into my own country.
My family imported cigarette lighters,
Gold-plated pens & tea kettles hand-
Painted with the bright flora seen
On scarves worn in the Jeddah souk,
Imported from central Asia.
When I smoked my first cigarette,
I lit it with a family lighter
Nervous behind our new house next
To the villas of two uncles, & an aunt
Who chose Egypt to reside in, her
Empty villa conjoined ours
& her marble yard was washed daily
Should she arrive one day in her country.
This habit I hid, took to the West
With the lighter & a dented teapot.
2.
I remember every place I smoked as if it was
Plated with a rare element,
In the Middle East I rarely could smoke:
Sometimes there were heavy crystal
Lighters & couture packs of slim cigarettes
On trays brought around by maids
In women’s rooms within their family compound,
& it was beautiful to be in this company,
But we were loose: loose women
Smoke, loose women should marry
Loose women are unmarried.
I love to say the word “loose” in Arabic.
It wasn’t a bad habit I packed with me,
To the West, I know now
With every exit, I vanished from
My country, breath by breath.
