Homesick

I am Homesick. 

Missing my country in an ill way, 

With the same illness that has rotted its soil, 

but not my roots yet. 

I miss the home that sheltered me a decade ago, 

But that would hurl rocks at my existence, now. 

What a cruel feeling. To miss a concept. 

I miss my country so nauseatingly, 

 I look for its taste in you. 

I find the clay coloured buildings on your skin. 

I find its silver dripping from your tongue. 

I find its music in your warmth. 

I find the complex histories and civil war in you too. 

I miss you in an ill way, 

Something about you knowing my mother tongue is a trap. 

You have taken the beauty of my heritage and held me captive with it. 

Our mother tongue, dripping with addicting sweetness. 

Only a hint of lemons in the end. 

It's enchanting until I realize the words must’ve been practiced and sharpened for them to pierce in the way they do.

To blind the way they do. “عیوني یا“ 

“My eyes” - *The following are common terms of endearment,* 

You take my traditional understandings and twist them into your shape. “حبیبتي یا“  

“My Love” 

Suddenly you look like my home country before the rubble, “حیاتي یا“ 

“My Life” 

You sound like what love could be without mountains of contradictions. “روحي یا“ 

“My Soul” 

That is the sickness of our mother tongue. 

Even in love, our language is always sorrowful. 

Because in Arabic, we cannot love without mourning. 

Even in summer, my home is melancholy .  

Because in Yemen, the Jasmines always grow but our children may not. 

To love, is an act of selfishness, 

It revels in the privilege of life, 

More than survival. 

So I shelter myself in the calligraphy, I lose myself in. 

I shelter myself in my broken mother tongue. 

ل بلدي و كلامي مش حقي. ٰ أقدر أنطق، كن 

I can speak, but my country, and my words are not mine anymore. 

من فراقي ، لساني الثقیل یعاقبني. 

My punishment for my departure is my heavy tongue.

My poems are dialectic, 

English makes me foreign, no matter how well I manipulate the words, 

It cannot understand my core. 

Arabic understands me. But I am forgetting its warmth. 

أقتھر من نفسي. 

I am saddened and ashamed of myself. 

When I can’t express it. 

When I reach for the words gifted to me, only to be too far from my roots. 

The cruelty is I can’t express this in Arabic, 

My writing is trapped on the left side of the page. 

So I write my poems twofold; 

Once in the voice of an educated foreigner. 

spelling , metaphors and comparisons. 

و مرة بصوت بنت، ضائعة في أصولھا. 

And Once in the voice of a girl, lost in her origins. 

خطي مكسر، قراءتي بطیئة و حتى البیت ھذا مھجور. 

My writing is broken, my reading is slow and even this line* I had to abandon. (*a line of poetry in arabic is referred to as a ‘Bait’ , which is also the word for home*) 

I study my mother tongue, as if writing on the other side will return me to my home. 

I draw the curved letters, until they embrace me like family. 

who never fumble for their words as I do.

I shelter myself in the concept of my childhood home 

I am Homesick for Yemen 

I am Homesick.

about the poet

My name is Raghad, I am a first generation Yemeni immigrant who spent most of my life in Canada. I am currently a UofT student in sociology, middle eastern and equity studies. Within my education and work I see writing as a way to educate, reflect and have power in our narratives. I originally began writing to try to understand the world around me and make sense of the injustices felt surrounded by. My writing mostly revolves around ideas of resistance and activism. By putting my thoughts and hurt onto a page I am able to express what is often silenced in me on a day to day.