HOW MANY YEMENI FATHERS HAVE TO DIE SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MILLER AND WYOMING

University of Michigan

١. Even when you are unable to recognize the world, or me, you still speak to me in Arabic. How foolish I was to think you’d pledge your oath to something else. Maybe even to Allah if you decided that today was the day to wipe the dust off your Qu’ran. It’s the only one we own.

٢. You make room for me on your hospital bed after being scolded by the nurse: I can die in the arms of my daughter. Flowers do not give me this warmth. I repeat “alif, baa, taa” up until the ع gets stuck in my throat. I wondered how you put your life into every letter, like it was your last breath, like it was every defeat and every victory. Maybe even your last prayer. We try again until I get it right.

٣. You send me to English school with our supermarket receipts for show-and-tell. At the time, I explained why I was fascinated with the backside of them— all the detail and color from ads and coupons. It felt like a gift and my classmates didn’t understand how good they looked in a book, on the wall or fridge.

٤. I learn how to make shahee and qahwa so I can bring them both to you before they bring out your medications. I put the mugs in a cheap plastic bag in case they spill as I drive through the potholed Southend; why I felt that getting into a car could mean dying in it. The government never cared to fix the roads near our homes. Ford spent more time putting our rijaal on the line. The pollution caused your lungs to collapse; why you sounded like the releasing exhaust from the cars you used to build.

٥. You send me to the Islamic school on Dix, hoping that I’d pick up on the religion you failed at. Maybe it would make me softer, or kinder. You did not think that of yourself, but I saw that there was something holy in you. The other girls asked me about you and I resisted looking at them too long, like I would be found out. I would be caught red-handed, caught in the fires of Jahannam if I said you were doing well. The last time I was there, you needed another blood transfusion, and your tea was left out. Cold and waiting.

٦. You ask me to bring the Qu’ran from the TV stand.

٧. You tell me that history lessons are boring, but that I must know what our watan

is really like. How you still cry when you hear “al-Jomhuriyah al-Mottahedah” recited even though you didn’t care for politics. You weren’t defined by a national anthem. But, you were Yemeni before anything else. You have strength with your nation. You weep with your nation. Repeat: This is our unity. You say that I must collect the dust, what’s left of our people.

٨. You have the Arabic news hooked up to the hospital TV, and you woke me up at inopportune times to turn it on. We see the first news of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I wish I had pretended to be asleep.

٩. You’re in and out of surgeries and the nurse told me to go home. She asked me if I had a mom.

١٠. When I visit your grave, I tell you the latest news about our watan. It is never any good. It makes me weep. I think about the Qu’ran, left open near your bed like it was your last mantra. When I gain the courage to open the box the nurse gave me, I see the mess you left, scattered sticky notes in illegible handwriting. All detail and color. I put them on our wall next to the supermarket receipts.