I was walking down the street when a man stopped me
and said,
Hey yo sistah, you from the motherland?
Because my skin is a shade too deep not to have come from foreign soil
Because this garment on my head screams Africa
Because my body is a beacon calling everybody to come flock to the
motherland
I said, I’m Sudanese, why?
He says, ’cause you got a little bit of flavor in you,
I’m just admiring what your mama gave you
Let me tell you something about my mama
She can reduce a man to tattered flesh
without so much as blinking
Her words fester beneath your skin and the whole time,
You won’t be able to stop cradling her eyes.
My mama is a woman, flawless and formidable in the same step.
Woman walks into a war zone and has warriors
cowering at her feet
My mama carries all of us in her body,
on her face, in her blood
And blood is no good once you let it loose
So she always holds us close.
When I was 7, my mama cradled bullets in the billows of her robes.
That same night, she taught me how to get gunpowder out of cotton
with a bar of soap.
Years later when the soldiers held her at gunpoint
and asked her who she was
She said, I am a daughter of Adam, I am a woman, who the hell are you?
The last time we went home, we watched our village burn,
Soldiers pouring blood from civilian skulls
As if they too could turn water into wine.
They stole the ground beneath our feet.
The woman who raised me
turned and said, don’t be scared
I’m your mother, I’m here, I won’t let them through.
My mama gave me conviction.
Women like her
Inherit tired eyes,
Bruised wrists and titanium-plated spines.
The daughters of widows wearing the wings of amputees
Carry countries between their shoulder blades.
I’m not saying dating is a first-world problem, but these trifling
motherfuckers seem to be.
The kind who’ll quote Rumi, but not know what he sacrificed for war.
Who’ll fawn over Lupita, but turn their racial filters on.
Who’ll take their politics with a latte when I take mine with tear gas.
Every guy I meet wants to be my introduction to the dark side,
Wants me to open up this obsidian skin and let them read every tearful
page,
Because what survivor hasn’t had her struggle made spectacle?
Don’t talk about the motherland unless you know
that being from Africa means waking up an afterthought
in this country.
Don’t talk about my flavor unless you know
that my flavor is insurrection, it is rebellion, resistance
My flavor is mutiny
It is burden, it is grit, and it is compromise
And you don’t know compromise until you’ve rebuilt your home for
the third time
Without bricks, without mortar, without any other option
I turned to the man and said,
My mother and I can’t walk the streets alone
back home anymore.
Back home, there are no streets to walk anymore.
Emtithal Mahmoud