Living in a new country club

My friend said something simple the other day but it stuck.

“You’re just like any other normal person in social settings”, he said. I get how I appear to be a regular person – why not? I have a regular job, like most people, a place to live, I do my groceries on the weekends.

But internally, my mind feels restless, I feel conflicted on holidays, I think twice before forming responses because I don’t speak my native language. I am evaluating social norms, processing my hesitance, shock, adaptability – or lack thereof; all the time. Yes, I look like just another person seemingly doing pretty well in the society, but no one will get this feeling unless they are a part of the “living in a new country club”. I don’t expect a softer treatment from anyone bc of this – but my experience of life is nothing like that of someone who has lived in one place their whole life.

Aware

 I was naive, unaware

I did not understand 

When the car sat in the garage while I walked to school in forty-five degrees

I was never allowed to drive

I had been invisible for a while 

When fever kept me in bed

Mama whispered verses,

healing blew across my face

I felt love

Or was it faith? Stronger. 

I didn’t yet know what that meant

My dada, he wasn't there when I was born

My name was given over the phone

Mother washed for six then

and ants ate at my scalp

I picked the wound until it grew

Was I six or eight when he was finally back?

then surprise came with joy, he had joy!

I saw him laugh with the cousins’ daughters

That side of him I had never seen before

I was shy, but why was it kept away?

I scratched my head, did not understand 

I jumped across rooftops,

toes bleeding red into the dust

I played with scissors

in ignorant bliss

I played in solitude, in fear

Mother was always praying

or at the sink

or fetching water for my abbuji

so he would not rage

But he did.

So angry, angry, angry

All because of a missing waif-beater vest 

And still, no work, no help

Just the mosque

I was too young to understand

Now I live with a kind man

Responsible. Present.

and father says he would rather die

than see me like this

But I live.

And I live.

And I live.

Albeit estranged... so impossible 

to comprehend 

I am worldly, aware

I now understand

Crow

 If I were a crow

I'd be liberated like the yearning winds of Afghanistan

Beneathe my curious talons, above the city streets, the buzz of a hopeless feat 

flying free, inculpable of an unnecessary anatomical anomaly; unconcerned

Relentless

So when illusion breaks, I see clearly 

the distance; novel and omnipresent 

self, culture, what is, what ought to be

the growing change of heart

Wide, wider than the sun

Everything, everywhere

And I fly, unapologetically - subject to an abstract desire 

of an insignificant entity, behind glass window, a questionable reality 

Afaf