Cartography: A Poem About Lost Homes

Image source: salmanrushdie.com

The question of diasporic identity is one that has been asked again and again by writers like Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kamila Shamsie etc. How does being away from your homeland really affect you? Does it affect the older generation more than it does the youth? Where does one truly belong? I have tried to answer and also raised some of these questions in this poem. It is about a young professional of Pakistani origin who tries to reason with her mother, an older lady who cannot forget her homeland and tries to look for traces of it in a foreign country.

Cartography

It is nine o'clock on a Thursday morning
And my mother is lost
On her way back from Tesco's.

My colleagues watch on as
I tell her on the phone, in fluent Urdu,
Which lane she has to take
Where she has to turn left
To return to our apartment.

It is twelve o'clock and I am fuming.
This has to stop.

'Why don't you teach her how to read the map?'
Sarah from accounts asks me at lunch.
I look at the blond fuzz on Sarah's neck.
Her eyes are a tired grey, the colour of her laptop and her suit.
She looks like the type of woman
Whose face would turn red after tasting a spoonful of curry
The type who would be forced to dance at the baraat
At a wedding back home.

I think of my mother in her bright phulkari shalwar kameez,
Dupatta hastily wrapped around her greying hair.
Looking ardently for something that was never there.

You will not find that packet of red chilli powder
Among the mild herbs and seasonings
Displayed on grocery store shelves, here, Ammi.
You will not find that old gnarled persimmon tree
Down the lane, here.
You will not smell the heady za'atar
From your neighbours' kitchen window, in this city.
This country means nothing to you, Ammi.
It never will.

I look up at Sarah in her grey suit,
The little blond hairs clinging to her neck like babies.

How can you find your way back,
If you are meant
To be lost?