Homelands: A Poem About Diasporic Identity

Image credits: cambriapress.com

This is a poem I wrote for the Global Poetry Writing Month, April. This is the story of a Pakistani girl who lives in a foreign country. She faces harassment by the original white inhabitants based on her race and religion. This poem talks about diasporic anxiety of being and fragmented identities.

Homelands

Now we shall sit
And draw maps on our skin,
Borders bleeding on flesh,
My body is as fragmented as my homeland
Passed down from hand to hand.
Lost.

Twelve year old me
Does not know exactly where her identity ends
And a racial slur begins.
'Paki' has nothing of the
Music of my homeland's name.
The exotic rolling of the tongue as
You unwrap the words, carefully.
Asia. Pakistan.
Home.

The word turns into ashes
In my mouth.
These two syllables have the power of
Silencing dinner table conversations
Freezing moving hands mid-air
'Where did you learn that word?'

Fourteen year old me
Fails to understand
Why she was egged in the streets
After the twin towers collapsed in America.
She had seen the news on TV.
Moments before the plane crashed
Into the buildings,
Her chest, too, had tightened,
The breath refusing to leave
Her lungs.
Trapped in her larynx,
Waiting for the world to fall apart
At her feet.

Twenty-six year old me
Stops short of answering the question
At a job interview.
'So where are you really from?'
She plays with the ends of her headscarf,
Twiddling the cloth
Between her fingers,
Making imaginary knots
And untying them again.
Unable to form words on
A tongue that had never stuttered before,
A tongue that had answers
At its tip, ever ready,
Stays silent, shamefaced.

Now we shall sit and imagine borders,
Draw them diligently on our skin,
Making careful calculations,
Separating Europe from Asia
Asia from the Americas,
Australia from Africa.

We shall unroll spools of thread
And trace maps on our hands, feet, faces.
Rigid, unmoving, permanent.
Tattooed on the skin, the globe.
As imagined communities fight wars,
In Palestine, Syria and Kashmir.

We shall let the blood flow
In scarlet streams down wrists, ankles, lips.
Drowning homelands and dinner tables and interview rooms.
Till the twelve year old girl is heard
Her screams resounding
Through the chambers of the globe
She looks at me straight in the eye
A ghost of my childhood, here to haunt me.
And asks

What is home?