Birth Certificate
🅠Is it a wounded bird? This thing that lies dying in the lap of a woman whose corpse is propped against the trunk of a giant mulberry? When its tiny wings flutter they splash her face with blood. Flies circle her gaping mouth. Her eyes are staring at hell. It wails like a human.
🧸No, it isn’t a bird. It’s a cherub covered in blood. It was startled and tried to hide when it saw me. I saw a knife covered with dirt and blood. I picked it up. I held the cherub by its wings. It shivered like the branches of the tree. I severed its umbilical cord. A cry soared. I decided to rid it of its wings. I whispered:
ဣ‘The heavens are no more safe than the earth.’
ไWhen I placed it on the ground, it crawled away in search of its first prey.
Dismemberment
ꦉThe body, or a voice impersonating it, said:
Go! As of now, you are all free.
⛄The eyes flew far away, joining flocks of other eyes.
ꦗwhich had filled the sky, almost blocking the sunlight.
🐓The lips parted company without a farewell;
One searched for a new face,
꧑the other for a lip that would listen to its complaints.
ꦓThe tired tongue sought a mute man’s mouth to rest in.
🌌The hands clapped and waved to each other as they fled.
🅷The right leg appeared frightened and hesitant,
😼then rushed to catch up with the left.
The nose fell on the ground. . .
🤡As for the heart, it kept beating alone
until a stray foot crushed it.
Afterwords
ไMy father’s warm palms shielded my ears. I could hear his blood racing in his veins. As if being chased by the bombs falling outside. My mother’s lips fluttered like a terrified butterfly. She was talking to God and asking him to protect us. That’s what she did during the last war. And He’d listened. Her arms were clasped around my two sisters. Maybe God could not hear her this time. The bombing was so loud. After our house in Jabalya was destroyed, we hid in the UNRWA school. But the bombs followed us there too . . .
and found us.
*
Mother and father lied
We didn’t stay together
I walked alone for hours
They lied
There are no angels
Just people walking
Many of them children
The teacher lied too
My wounds didn’t become anemones
like that poem we learnt in school
*
Sidu didn’t lie
He was there
Just as he’d promised me
before he died
He is here
I found him
Leaning on his cane
Thinking of Jaffa
When he saw me
He spread his arms wide
Like an eagle
A tired eagle with a cane
We hugged
He kissed my eyes
*
–Are we going back to Jaffa, sidu?
–We can’t
–Why?
–We are dead
–So are we in heaven, sidu?
–We are in Palestine, habibi
and Palestine is heaven
. . .
and hell
–What will we do now?
–We will wait
–Wait for what?
–For the others
. . .
to return
(Excerpted from ‘Postcards from the Underworld’ by Sinan Antoon, translated by Sinan Antoon; with permission from Seagull Books)
