Middleground - Issue 3

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

a child he handed you to me said it was beautiful said I was old enough to have my own I stole you I stole my mother’s photo a child holding a child she is holding her baba why is the child with her hip jutted out always a girl why must she bear her hips have never why do you love a sister holding her sister beautiful he says it’s beautiful he says why can’t I be what is it in me that the westerner or the woman why can’t I be

Our father loves to tell us: a yemeni woman obeys her husband out of duty, a shaami woman obeys out of love.

Migration is translation. Your arabic will be stronger than mine. You will cook shaami food dolma, fattoush, baba ghanoush, lahm bi a’ajeen, and I burn rice. You will be the one who stayed and I will be the one who left and all I can do is show you Goya’s painting, Cronus eating his own children in terror, as explanation. But I half close my eyes and raise cupped hands to the moon: you will not marry until you are ready you will not you will not I am breathing into you a prayer from on high as you lie in his belly to remember: I am the first person to hold you. You turned your head to suckle my dry breast. I made a promise and so did you. You promised to resist.

there are many ways to bury your daughters I am separating grains from a vast steel pan without a cousin or sister beside me. my palms itch. the stones are indistinguishable from the grain. how hard I tried to get something that should have been a given. I count them how hard I tried I am beside how hard I

Our father loves to tell us: it is men who are قَوَّامُونَ عَلَى ال. It is less than a quarter of an ayah.

he wanted women who arabic. he wanted his children to know the of our deen. he wanted women who these people shame us remember our golden this is why people must children who arabic. children who are soldiers men shaded tents men dancing eyes women serving serving coffee dusk men oud sincerity sincerity poetry

People react differently to the past. People react differently to survival. I understood that when I watched our mothers.

Recently my mother told me: I tried my best, which I take as an apology.

I stand in the kitchen can opener in hand, dazed. I am the product of a woman who did not want any more children after the coveted son. I think: all I wanted was to be accepted and loved. He knew that. I have learned what it means to grieve the living. I was too young when I learned that love can mean letting go. But look,

Most days I am not at war. I watch the moon, mother to us all, cool and dispassionate even as she rises. I am unresistant deliciously unresilient unrestrained in my gentleness a thing I cultivate because we were flowers that grew in hostile soil. I cook for myself, I write for myself. I make monkish fare because complexity still tires me. I live simply so I have the energy to write nuance. I spend my days writing myself out of the cavernous silence out of black and white thinking using black and white tools thinking making pathways for us them us them us them us them us east west east west east west… I refuse it all. I am unlearning every day. I am learning to love myself. I am learning that this solitude is self-imposed and that it is safe to love. I am learning to be delicate with myself.