I am not buckled safely into my seat
I am watching the road unravel
behind us like a ribbon of dust.
Through the back window of my uncle’s Datsun
Amman looks like a tender little place
the color of my teddy bear’s fur.
Its houses crowded into one another
on its seven parched hills
are the shades of my family’s skin—
almond of my mother’s brow,
wheat of my father’s arms,
tea-with-cream of my grandmother’s palms.
We are driving away on the only road to the airport.
We are driving away from this dollhouse town
and my storybook childhood of tree-climbing
and laughter of too many cousins to count.
We are driving away from impending war.
We are driving away
because we can leave
on the magic carpet of our navy blue
US passports that carry us
to safety and no bomb drills
to the place where the planes are made
and the place where the president
will make the call to send the planes
into my storybook childhood
over the seven hills
next door to neighbors who will now
become refugees.
We are driving and I
am not safe
driving away from
myself and everything I know
into the great miracle of
a country so large
wars are kept thousands of miles at bay.
My young life is coming undone
on the road behind me
where I know all the names of
the trees in Arabic
rumman saru zayzafoon
and I know the spot on each hilltop
where the crimson poppies return every spring
and I know the best bakery to line up for
Ramadan pancakes before breaking the fast.
In the backseat of my uncle’s Datsun
I want to float through the window
and into yesterday
when August was just late-afternoon ice cream
and late-night card games
and the crinkle of brown paper and tape
covering copybooks,
fresh as this morning’s bread,
ready to receive the school year ahead—
math equations,
poems,
histories of battle.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha