An Ode to Sand
Basmala Zyada on Rimaal*, it has been six years since I have seen you.
And yet.
I remember to anticipate you. I remember
how you cover even paved streets, the feeling
of you in my sandals, under my heels,
so insistent, so bothersome, so constant.
In the apartment, I find traces of you still,
carried by the wind from mountains that
are far enough away to be mere pinpricks,
but not so far for you to travel
to make your irksome presence known.
And yet.
Rimaal, you are encompassing. You are
rickshaws, small and quick through city streets,
kicking up clouds of you into our faces. You are
Sharm el-Sheikh, Gamasa, al-Sokhna, Port Said,
where we go when we want to remember
that we still have horizons, with you beneath our feet.
In the one-bedroom-one-living-room apartment
that makes the motherland, you are her bowels,
her leftovers, her faraway gaze, her forgotten dunes,
her nile as it calls and weighs and pounds upon us.
Rimaal, you are so aggravating. You are
the years I have forgotten, the proud balcony
presiding over generations, the midnight dares
over a deck of cards in crowded gardens.
Rimaal, you are home, you are awful,
you are terrible, you are beloved.
And yet.
Rimaal, love, can I tell you a story?
*rimaal = Arabic word for sands
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