is where we place pieces of ourselves
on the carpeted floor,
kneel before the trauma,
kneel before the life that could have been
and now hangs from the rooftop,
dripping of dua.[2]
I am an expert on ruins, it turns out.
I know how broken my father must be
to say “Allahu Akbar”[3]
as if he were building a house
on the ridge of his mouth,
to point to a verse in the Quran[4]
when asked about where he lives.
I don’t know anyone here
who hasn’t shared the frame of a bunk bed
with faith.
I think of my childhood days,
how I’d rush for the fajr[5] prayer with my father,
ignore the strips of himself that he’d shed
all the way between the house and the masjid.
On my thirteenth birthday,
he gifted me an embroidered imama,[6]
blue,
to match the color my heart was closest to.
I grew up like a speeded prayer
and waited for my body to make room
for more of my family’s sorrow.
Five times a day
I would kneel and weep,
scurrying for that last sliver of me
with every adhan.[7]
By the time I fold my rug,
I am complete again,
which is to say,
there is enough plot between my hands
for my father and his dreams
to sprout.
[1] Masjid translates from Arabic to “mosque.”
[2] Verbal prayer in Islam.
[3] Translates from Arabic to “God is great” or “God is the greatest.”
[4] The holy book of Islam.
[5] The first of the five daily prayers in Islam and is performed between dawn and sunrise.
[6] A headpiece, similar to a turban, worn by male Muslims
[7] The call for prayer in Islam, recited from the minaret of a mosque.
Hajer Requiq is an emerging female poet from Tunisia, who holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sfax. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Lunch Ticket, Rowayat, Disquieting Muses Quarterly Review, Northern New England Review, and Blue Earth Review, among others.
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