In Arabic

There’s no to be, no passivity, is is always implied. Nor does Miss exist in the local

dialect, only the half block between her father’s house and husband’s. A boy

takes as his battle cry his sister’s name or his camel’s; his gun’s imagined refrain

mabrook—congratulations. There’s a word for the little pieces of candy wrapped

not in plastic, but dried lilac; a phrase for the static of snow-crust forming

white camellias of ice. In class I scribble translation’s phonetic equivalent; how to ask

what place is this? which street? In English tourist sounds like terrorist, terrorist tourist;

in Arabic there are ninety-nine ways to say God. Friday’s aljoum’a stems from “to gather,”

as in to-gather-for-noon’s-holy-prayer. What hour is this?—my teacher asks—

to which I insist, At the market I drankfresh juice. What day is this? Let’s take

our son to the pool. She answers questions with questions: You’re from where,

exactly? Why are you here? Study the sounds, she proposes, the characters’

valley’s and peaks: : what do you see? A corkscrew of scrolls

unrolled across the dead at Mujab Wadi.