A poem from To Live in Autumn (Backwaters Press, 2014) for Hamra Street, titled To Hamra. One of the earlier poems I wrote. Sharing it today because I miss streets. Crowded loud smelly narrow streets. To Hamra Every morning Umm Naji makes a lousy joke as she stirs our coffee. We look at her dirty nails, we hold the warm paper cups, walk across streets that are endless in their endless repetitions, small labyrinths we have memorized, familiar labyrinths in which we get lost on purpose. Here is the yellow coffee shop, and another, and another, where our fathers curl politics with their cigar smoke all day, measure poetry with their sugar spoons and say, “The situation is bad again, it is bad again.” To Hamra Here is Modca, the ancient coffee shop, where memories cling to the walls like a wild vine that sprouts voices and smoke and small conversations. Here is Modca, the ancient coffee shop, turning into a Vero Moda, no more spoons or cigarettes or clatter of cups— history buried in clothes, outshone by Starbucks. Here is the small cassette shop in which the fat man barely fits, in which the fat man sings and spits, and nods and nods, as if to God, saying business is slower than old age, releasing Arabic music into crowded streets that move to the inborn beat, here is the small cassette shop, and another, and another. Here is the flower shop, and another, and another. They all have the same name, insist they’re not the same— a sidewalk of flowers and dust. We decide to buy the white lilies, just because they’re flowers, just because they’re white, just because they’re lilies. Here is the deserted theater where the bald man sighs into a red telephone, shouts at his wife, cries his bills, his anger away, you’d never expect emotions inside the smell of old semen and posters of movies that never really play. Here is the deserted theater, and another, and another. Here is the whorehouse, where the fat woman gathers old age in a chair, promises cab drivers a good time with the worn beauties inside, leaning bare on the bar, leaning, withering in the smoke of a cheap cigar, and another, and another. Here is the leftist pub, where the gray man smiles, plays the oud (could wood and strings reach the soul like that?) he sings, his rough voice sinks through us like a rock, Umm Kulthum, Fairuz, Abdel Halim, ya leil ya ein, the most famous words in our language, ya leil ya ein, we clap and dance and hope the term papers will write themselves, here is the leftist pub, and another, and another. Here is Universal, where Nagham the waitress knows we have lots of lemon in our lentil soup, lots of cigarettes in our pockets, tells us to smile smile smile, “because smiling is such, such, a nice thing to do.” The black kohl on her eyes is thicker than memories and Turkish coffee, darker than the street outside. Here we are, drinking sunset and soup again, watching time flutter its paper wings, weightless like a day in Hamra. Here’s to another day in Hamra, and another, and another.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 04:46:26 +0000
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