Half a Letter SUMAYA KASSIM
Mixing families is a delicate business. Our father’s hands are not delicate. When he married your mother, I was fourteen. Nothing could have prepared me for her exactness. She is from Syria. She likes parties and guests and romance. She has expectations. The house can’t just be clean; it has to be spotless. She keeps organised photo albums. When you grow up you will know exactly who your aunts and uncles and cousins are. You will know Syria through her beyond the bombs and images of a war torn country. My mother is from Yemen. She hates guests. She hangs up objects on the wall: dresses, pictures of roses covered in her notes, a necklace. She cuts up photographs. Only the heads of the people she likes survive. I inherited my mother’s isolation and her desire to write, except I don’t burn everything. And I would never read my daughter’s diary. I take a can from out of a cupboard. Preparing a meal for one is a historically unprecedented phenomenon. If our family were a nation its policy would be isolationist. A quarter of a century ago I was the age you were when I last saw you, which is when our father placed a knife on the table between us and told me he’d cut the westerner right out of me. * Our father loves to tell us: indeed they (women) plot a mighty plot. It is less than half of an ayah. * comparison is the thief of joy. half sister is a question: which is the better half? sayid qutb was at the lawns picket fences your mother loved your blue eyes and blonde hair she was when your eyes your hair darkened as a toddler you told me my hair was too dark and dirty the exact phrase was ‘not sweet’ he ate honey whipped cream burnt pitta I drew butterflies and flowers and you coloured them in he slid a butter knife between a walnut’s hard lips splitting it when a nation is at war with itself who is the enemy when the war started your mother cried and you held her she was the one who left she guilt tipped tongue liked that I read she hoped you would read my father said you weren’t very bright he’d had enough of one bright daughter I was the one no I was the one no I was the one who loved you I was the first person to hold you every month I bled he told me it was as if I’d lost 1
