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Overview
Through finely crafted poems that utilize a plainspoken roughness to keep the reader slightly disoriented, Almallah replicates his own verbal and cultural experience of existing between languages and societies. There is a sense of displacement to these poems as Almallah recounts the amusing, sad, and perilous moments of day-to-day living in exile. At the heart of Bitter English is a sense of loss, both of home and of his mother, whose struggle with Alzheimer’s becomes a reflection of his own reality in exile. Filled with wit, humor, and sharp observations of the world, Bitter English brings a fresh poetic voice to the American immigrant experience.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226642789 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 09/03/2019 |
| Series: | Phoenix Poets |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 96 |
| File size: | 579 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Rites of Passage
CITIZENSHIP INTERVIEW
An order is an order yes I get it —
I do
not
understand:
He tells me to raise the voice
mine
to answer loudly clearly:
Yes I get
it
I do—no longer understand an order—
is
yes:
an order—
so I will leave my
passports there for your pair of
examining eyes there —
on the
edge
of this pressed wood—
while you
do
whatever you are now doing —
and
while you are at it I'll cross
my
legs in front of your officer
face:
To show you the sheen of my
ceremonial black shoes.
JISR
1
In the air, in the plane, in the opening of dark wounds:
I hold both in one hand, which one should I use,
I hold both in one hand, American blue
passport,
or this thing "Palestinian Authority"
inscribed
in
gold
and marred
and stained
by its own
color.
["To the bridge?" the Jordanian officer asks—
rhetorical man
stamping my Palestinian Authority
passport:
And on the escalator down
a piano
and a player
in the middle of this revolving
progress.]
2
In the taxi, on the way to land control,
I talk nothing of that sort I only
stare at the uneventful fall
out of a pane covered with warm dust
and disdain:
How green it all is
still how olive are the fields.
[Only in case, I hide the American blue,
only in
case I get held up
somehow:
And how mistaken I was
when digging
out old things and times
bad purchases and
indecision
waiting for
this package
— a passport —
for my new American
life
in my garage I said:
After this
there will be
nothing on the mind.]
3
The land could take you there by its own accord,
the divided pie is being warmed up
in the October meditations
of sun.
[And father's words
I
remember
a distant unknown reality:
"Amman to Bethlehem,"
he said,
"before all this
a two-hour car ride."]
4
It's dark now waiting I've only
known Jericho at this hour
waiting:
And leaning against
a yellow van with the driver
blowing smoke
and complaining
of the dearth
of passengers
to Bethlehem.
[It's considered a "rest-area"
it's named.
It's full of vehicles that take and take
and take:
Buses of people coming to the Palestinian side,
after crossing
on another
bus from Jordan
to the Israeli side,
the drained stream that once was
a Jordan River.]
5
We buckle up on settlement,
we see the sign "Jerusalem"
we go the other way, to where
we avoid—
we never go through:
Always the side roads, always the rough edges of hills, to the ups and downs
where Palestinian
towns around this holy city
move with the sound and call of this
"valley
of fire."
[And as soon as we get a chance out of settlement roads,
we unbuckle this body destined
to ruin.]
6
The sides of this van this vehicle to
Bethlehem
all senses:
The call to prayer, the butcher meat, the blood and bones,
the car, the lots, and the open engine:
And the air brushing the hand and hair:
The slope the incline, the swerve
and bump:
And after the checkpoint,
the sweets shop in the middle
of nowhere.
[And today at check,
a point
a wave but at times a wait and at others
the questions take.]
7
In the mind all wire and stone.
[And in memory the iron rusting and
railing green
leaves.]
8
On this island, in the middle of the road —
how did the vehicle make it
up this incline:
Out
the valley
of fire—
the Palestinian Authority officer
waving death.
[It's the end of roundabouts,
the way around Jerusalem:
And up that hill
after the officer
if there was light
the dome of the rock
shines
in many
eyes.]
9
We are approaching I say:
"You'd have to back it up
— your van —
the only
way
out of this narrow road."
"It's OK," he says.
[I did
forget I do
remind my
self how
forgetful I am.]
10
By the iron door that's now green,
I remember
its old beige and brown.
"Stop here," suddenly I say:
He brakes—
we step out:
He unloads my
small bag:
I take out my wallet
and pay him
in a different
currency.
[And here I am
forgetful
and remembering
and dusting
off the winds
at
last.]
MAP
From above we pass
the places I couldn't visit on this return:
It's all there
on the screen
in front of me
and for me
to see—
only on a screen.
I look out window-
panes:
Yes,
we're above clouds,
nothing recognizable
from Amman, we
pass over more white clouds —
over Jerusalem now —
I turn the screen to language:
Are these Arabic words I see?
Why ...
I can't read them anymore:
Maybe
— I say —
maybe
I need
to be there
on level
with land
in order
to read
the land.
House
PICTURES
we sat together you and I mother next to son the armchairs worn against the dullness of white walls you read aloud the same sentence over and over
I place your hand in mine do I let go I stand there was between us something everything to you the past is us the past the past is everything
and there I look the beige cupboard full of pictures it's still closed up your youth I know almost nothing I am your son the youngest one the son of your aging
I open up the beige the black and white pictures your arms revealed and in the sun revealing the weak and slender hand is aimless on the table
I place a photo in your palm your daughter and your sons I am a child the funny face I make you point to him you ask if he belongs to me I say he is your son
you do not know you look at me in wonder the past the past is everything the present your mind the nerves the stems of blood bursting
THE HOUSE
I
Is there an earliest memory I can go back to? I don't know exactly what to go back to. I vaguely see a scene from a house we used to rent, not very far away from what became to me "the house," "the first place," "the beginning of it all" — which turns out just now, by the turn of these sentences, not to be the first. Not very strange, we live imagining the facts ... and now I can see shadowy female figures sitting together in a living room, in that house we rented before "the house," the one I remember my mother calling dar al-haj. I can also see now a particular female figure, maybe in her late twenties, with long, thick black hair, and I can hear my mother telling me of her finding me so incredibly edible that she bit my ear.
II
I think. One of the earliest memories from the place that became our house is the huge, deep pit that lay behind it. We had this door at the back of "the house" that opened up to this hole in the earth. I remember my father opening that door not necessarily to show me anything and I happened to be there, playing in an unfinished kitchen, and I saw it. The pit was finally turned into a well that collects the rainwater from the house's flat roof, and I'm not sure if my uncle and his wife and kids moved into that level of the house before or after the construction of the well. But I do remember the iron door there that remained closed for a very long time.
III
Was it my father or my mother who kept talking and repeating the story of moving into the house before installing any windows? My father told the story as a proof of my mother's stubbornness. She wouldn't stay to pay another month's rent while there was a house that was now hers, a short walk away. How unsettled she must've been ... and this just occurs to me. She wanted to move in at once, make the place her own. It didn't make a difference if there were windows installed or not. Though I never could imagine or figure out whether the iron railings covering the openings in the structure we eventually called windows were installed or not. They must've installed the main iron door to move in there. Can it be ... and my mother must've known it, that what constituted the house is that door, which locked a portion of her world inside a structure.
IV
A feeling kept me above the ground all the time. What calls this hunger? Every time I put down a sentence, I think of all the details to negate it.
LINES OF RETURN
I
Give me one hint, give me the thing that is spark, stop telling me that I should no longer lie to myself, I know I look ridiculous holding onto this memory or that, trying to stare myself down, as I repeat the lines: you are not you, you are you, done with, over. Strange you are at home, in this house of fact, this house of ruin: you are you, looking past the laundry line on the roof, at the hills as all flames have to be put off, as the sun goes down, as the time is so obvious. There is no one, none: we gather ourselves inside, we flatten thoughts on the rugs praying: mother, on this couch repeating sounds, bowing, are you?
II
At the sight of ruins, stop. They're tearing it down, the old theater knocked in half, sliced like cake, for everyone to gape at the empty layers, all the way to the back, against the last wall standing: the stairs with the iron railings swaying rusty branches and leaves. Say something to the empty seats hanging in everyone's view like charms: everyone's memory is here. Walk away, don't look in, inside, this is your blind spot, this is where you split the atoms of disaster, this is where you draw lines on lines on lines, this is where you reach out for the lemon tree's fruit, this is where you recall the hand pricked by thorns.
III
When I was a child I was always, dear mother, on you
depending:
I followed you up these stairs, and you set no
law,
just song. We walked the stairs together and we had nothing to
ground us in the land but the hands we held against air.
See how you reach for the grape leaves hanging against the rust
there,
see how the stones keeping the dirt from collapsing are also
railing.
HOUSE CLEANING
(1. kitchen)
there is a lot to take cleaning a kitchen first of all there is the dead mouse or is it dead asleep no sound I make then banging around no movement
nothing
and what is the best way to pick up dead things out of the windowpanes father and son walking and talking yes there is a lot to take cleaning a kitchen and looking for the source I open up cabinets filled with things that look back funny old food how old how long ago how many times did I bring the same thing wrapped the same wrap used the same old plastic hanging by the rotten kitchen door yes same we did it together at times always now is never and my mother my mother my mother she wrapping everything seeds and feeds sumac many bags wrapped in bags packed and stacked
one on top of the other many more there wrapped over the years
forgotten
and opening up the abyss of a black trash bag the cleaning starts small bags dropping into the big bag and the hand that handles
hesitates
(2. garden)
as I was raking dead leaves in my city garden in philly and upon finding the
broken tip of an iron tool used to pick the ground and dig out dirt I realized I know nothing of the terminology for the things and tools of the earth in this english tongue I use every day composing and raking leaves I am what I am a deserter of my own language unsheathing the sword of otherness it begins cutting my disdain for the adoption and the pitiful thing adopted and the whip lashing out against the world and how have you been doing this a.m. well
historically speaking I've been part of the disadvantaged of the earth all my life
and for seventeen years now I've been bottling up selves and sticking plastic bottles in the best of american frigidaires
THE HUNT, A HOME
for Diya
I
In front of the house, a broken tile:
part of the past order—
it reminds me of the Egyptian man who owned the place:
a hoarder
of dark wood,
of the black
stuff
that lodges itself on skin beneath the eye,
and what
is it about the rusty
brown
of a broken tile that sums it all? I don't know,
I don't remember
much
of what he had, but all his years in exile were there,
in that
house,
and on top
of the old tile that I can see now
staring at me,
he "installed"
a newer kind
a bright color for time.
My brother and I walk
his steps
noticing how everything
was kept, how everything,
a cover—how can
this man move out of this place?
How and where
is he going to store all his years?
II
The street is being blocked:
a car
is backing up
in the
middle of the road.
How could they—I look—transport a whole
house? In this space
the roots are malleable and the uprootedness
not really
the thing at hand, it
is the thing at work—
I imagine a tree in place of the house,
its roots dangling on
pavement,
brushing against the cold April winds
as the "oversized
load" signs, with
the flashing cars from the front and back
pass the entire
block by, and I see windows
passing me by and I look down
to where the wheels roll away
the whole house:
lo and behold!
There are no roots dangling from this
wood:
only the air making
the rounds
of a gone by time.
III
And hear again! This is how the story goes:
in this country,
in these parts of land it's
all about this wood that wants to gather
all the elements of its
end.
And long ago
my brother meets
the light in his name,
in a word,
and the light travels fast.
Diya keeps running with
that name, trying to
reflect the flame
within himself,
his true nature if you will
but exile
catches up
with all his steps.
He tries to settle and contain himself
within a structure, of
mirrors, but everything freezes with the cold,
and the waters in pipes
begin expanding beyond their means and the solid quality
of the matter makes copper
burst, and then a trickle begins filling walls with whatever liquid escapes this
deadening cold.
Everything fills
and slowly the abandoned house makes itself at home.
THE HOUSE, SEARCHED
i
The house, searched, is not something that gives way to form. My attempts to put it to some rhythm and sound always turn out to be laughable. At least for me. I read what I put down in lines about it, and I can't take my own experience seriously. And I'm thinking, am I really wired in such a way to produce all these clichés of war, to reproduce all the images we've been seeing in movies in the news? Why can't I take myself seriously? I'm experiencing a movie-like moment, some momentary empathy toward that boy I was, and then cut:
we're in a different time and place, aren't we?
There is no need to fret
over disaster.
ii
My wife tells me of her own experience with house searches. She lived in the south of Lebanon —
And it seems the protocol is one, standardized: a higher-ranking military officer leads the house search ordering the door open with a bang not so to speak walks in the house
accompanied by two soldiers he brings out of his throat a broken kind of Arabic
talks to the head of the household with it in a polite courteous manner a real
gentleman he was, my father said
there is a curious exchange between him and his two soldiers they want to
rush to conclusions they want to take and break but the polite officer begs them
patience restraint talks sense into them while other soldiers in the background are
taking apart everything, opening the closets, ripping the mattresses open with a blade
sticking out of their rifles I won't use the words machine gun or M16 they sound way
too overdramatic and regardless one or two soldiers go up the stairs to
the roof—
I've been through it but I don't remember any of it— I'm merely
comparing notes here: what my father said and what my wife is now telling me—
She gets animated starts speeding up the pace of events something inside her is stirring or being stirred her face is suddenly
flushed she's getting tired of her own maneuvers at conveying—
Why
I want to laugh now.
THE BOOKCASE
1
After the eye can no longer take on the world,
vaguely, it looks vaguely, as though hidden behind a shield of shadows, and after my last trip to Palestine, I sit in Philly staring at the bookcase in our living room, around me I keep seeing mother's lips moving toward these words.
I couldn't then understand, when home, when traveling back, one truth, pure emotion, no calculation, this is the moment of anger:
"You are all waiting for me to die. I want to go back to my mother."
2
After the eye can no longer take on the word,
after it sees its truth glaring, as though it's waking up against the morning sun, remembering all of this now, and how it happened so quickly:
I can't remember anything! I sit staring at the bookcase in our living room, while my daughter watches Arabic cartoons on TV.
I see the wood collecting everything but books:
time, how many times are being collected, and all those books I picked up from side streets in America ... how did we survive all this moving?
How could anyone survive life without once saying,
"I want to go back to my mother."
3
After the eye can no longer take on the void,
after it sees nothing in truth, after it closes its lid to the light, after disaster, after all ...
we sit by the bookcase, I beside it, my wife with her back to it, as we are trying: our daughter stares at the moving images on TV,
smiles at them. My wife tells me I need to see this video. She tells me I have to! And where would I fit another image. Aren't we
drowned?
Isn't the world just full? And those words as
the body lies on shore for the waves to rock gently,
as I see the little dead boy sleeping, death seeping, mothers crying, and the order, all things disappearing, and us, lining up against the sea and its waves shouting,
"You are all waiting for me to die.
I want to go back to my mother."
Excerpted from "Bitter English"
by .
Copyright © 2019 The University of Chicago.
Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsBitter English
I. Rites of Passage
Citizenship Interview
Jisr
Map
II. House
Pictures
The House
Lines of Return
House Cleaning
The Hunt, a Home
The House, Searched
The Bookcase
III. Mother in Between
Matters of Light, Fog, and Sometimes Smoke
Pontificate
Chronology
Recycling
Into His Own
IV. Dirty Underworld
Grand
Prayer
Anniversary
Love Poem
At the Farmers’ Market
At the Post Office
Five Hours, an Autobiography
Malmoum
Epilogue: Another Tongue Sustains You
Notes