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It’s February 1991, and I can’t tell you where the Middle East is on a map, or why it’s called the Middle East. But my family eats Syrian bread with every meal (I can’t tell you the difference between Syrian bread and pita, but I know they’re not the same).
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“My father says he’s sorry about the noise, but he wants you to know that we wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for 1953 and the American overthrow of Iran’s democracy.”
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What did you hope to build in the / New country?
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I can’t recall a single time that my father has told me about his journey through the mountains . . . It was just something that I picked up, some truth that I have always carried.
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Ghazal: A Letter Of eight children, Mamani named you after sunlight. Since I changed my name, you try harder to tread light. Two decades ago you were Mama. But now […]
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I started to feel drowsy from the post-iftar food coma, the still air in the room, and the melancholic rhythm of the preacher’s recitation. I tried reading the Farsi subtitles to stay focused, but my eyes were tearing yawn after yawn.
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Now reading submissions for our WE ARE MORE column.
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Before I loved you, the figs were still in season. / My body was a lone fig swollen like summer. / My body was a lonely fig swollen like summer, / In every dream as bottomless as shame.
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How does one navigate the in-between?
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No human attempt / to erase [pain] is successful
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To say the past is in the past ignores the abundant ways it controls their lived experience.
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The world is ending. I am still afraid of everything I was yesterday.
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Despite growing up in a predominately white suburb, my family never had a white dentist.
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We Are More is a new Rumpus column written by and for the SWANA community
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I’ve been explaining the Armenian Genocide all my life.
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