When I was a child they said we were the Arabs in Africa. Now, I realise we are the Africans in Arabia.
– Baba.
Baba washes in my cackling laughter;
a black and white photo scraping away brush swept clay.
This is how I imagined my father as a child;
unblinking.
I think he’s heard it somewhere else before; (the laughter)
tracing a note to a common ancestor…
some days he tells me about sitting outside the headmaster’s office,
about the classroom and I must piece together everything else…
what to make of a picture and a throw-away comment?
Father and son time;
I am the never-child splashing bathwater on his best suit,
the same boy in the picture, curious at the searing flash of silver…
graffiti on the shop window (I think they owned a shop?)
Grandma soaking a rag in run-off water;
maybe she could see her children swimming in the polluted glass?
I like to imagine that the Nile divided the makeshift football pitch (or something like that);
imagine my father wading through the current
and emerging with his afro untouched.
When we sit down at the restaurant,
(melting candle wax; weary flame)
a red sea washes between our menus.
…
Tell me about home, Baba.
Home? Fahd, I can’t see, can you check for me? Can you check if they have fish?
English