The English language is so beautiful. I douse myself in body glitter, rub champagne in my hair and dance through pages and pages. Growing up I was tired of speaking. People sobbed in Arabic all around me, they yelled and fought and waged wars. My language was dirty. I took solace in Westerns. I danced all these years, soundtracked by Fitzgerald, Bukowski and Salinger. I was going to make it there. I promise. I promise. I swallowed their book whole, their colonial ink staining my maternal tongue, boys were mean to their mothers after my kisses.
My mother tongue isn't dirty; I should've been kinder. Bought her presents on Christmas and waved flower crowns on Mother's Day. Told her I loved her. Thanked her for enveloping me in this cocoon. (Gibran, Kibani, Nasr'Allah, Akl.)
I love you (I'm sorry). You gave me beautiful boys who were always too kind to be mean. They flushed and made sweat smell romantic. You gave me a weather that would melt the paper through your fingers. My books would slip and I would tumble trying to catch them, trying to get my words back, trying to roll my tongue back into my mouth.
People are always doused in shame where I come from. I tried to scrub and scrub for hours to get it off of me. Get free. Stop being so dirty. I wish we talked more. I wish we used our melodies to lullaby our shame to sleep. I wish we told one another we loved each other. Lay camouflaged in the dirt, smack our lips and let the sunshine dance through our fingers and eyelashes. Confess that you love. You do, in fact, bottle up all this love be albak. Tell teta you love her and her zlabieh, tell jedo he always gives you too much money, and someday you ought to buy him a field for him to grow infinite apple trees. Sell them to his neighbors. Put Israel out of business like he's always dreamed. Tell baba and mama that they did a good job. I swear, I promise. The world is more than it seems. It is so vast and infinite.
And all these people feel so much and talk so little, and you ought to write a book about it. Write it in English, let the Westerns read it.
