and from the inside in

Mother and The Lover’s Rock
A blind beggar in Beirut
stopped my mother
by the Raouché
where unrequited lovers
used to jump.
She was pale
and very thin,
with a frightening
copper mane.
I wondered if
a spell she’d cast
before to attain
supernatural skills
had gone horribly awry
and this is how
she ended up
blind and destitute.
Did she not know
about the perils
of ‘Gods bearing gifts’?
“You are veiled,”
she told my mother,
“And possess
a Kuwaiti citizenship.
Come here,
and I shall unveil
your future.”
“No thanks,”
said mother,
“I don’t believe
in soothsayers.”
“There is greatness in your path!”
She shouted at my mother’s back.
“You must not be confused
about your role when the time arrives.”
That stopped mother in her tracks.
She glanced at the giant rock
where lovers came to die,
then trotted to the beggar,
who sat cross-legged
with an open palm.
In the car,
mother’s eye twinkled with desire
that melted all thoughts
of the civil war
she came to Lebanon
to resolve.
Nada Faris
HE Traveled on a Train
He traveled with history on a train,
but remembered that the train
was never built in Kuwait,
thus waylaying history. Or,
one version of it, at least.
He traversed lands
that were not his own,
in army uniform, dapper
though creased and crumpled,
his backpack full of energy bars
and batteries. He
was ever so polite,
tipping his beige bent hat
to strangers, smiling, asking
about their names and health
—strangers he would not hesitate
to bomb when elevated
thousands of miles in the air,
and they mere insects crawling
on the planet that gave him
his accent, his burgers, his beard.
He traveled with history on a train,
both passengers without a map,
but you know what he always likes to say,
“If there is a will, there is a way,” and Bill
is a captain with orders,
blasting through the multiverse,
the loud air horns warning strangers
from trespassing, a heinous offence,
—strangers whose names he remembers
and to whom he gave out chocolate
and chewing gum and said,
“For your feisty little girls.”
He, my captain,
never questions their color
from the air,
black, brown, or gray
are close enough
in a cubical, and besides,
when he divests himself of his uniform,
he retires to his office
to celebrate himself,
and wonders how he
and history
can sell another
50 Shades of Grey,
for our feisty little girls.
Nada Faris
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