ZAINAB SYED I piercing a city back into tapestry I

by Zainab Syed

It is believed that Lahore has been forgotten by its lovers. Yet, if anyone should lead a search for her missing parts, they would find them inside my fathers chest and reflected in my mothers eyes. Every night, her soil tugs at their lungs, calling them to my grandmothers garden. We will not fight to save that which we do not love. In her sky, there is no space for birds and when spring comes, she does not dress-up. When the foreigners were evacuated from Islamabad after 9/11, my father was given the option to go with them, but he could not bring himself to board that plane. With every tree, every songbird, and everyone that he had known looking up at him, he could not choose to build a life anywhere else. The soil beneath his feet was the only home he had ever known. Three years later, we packed our bags and boarded a plane to Romania. Now, my family is a 21st century nomadic caravan. We travel light and cross many deserts, but there is no place to anchor in the sand. We might as well be floating; shifting sand dunes without a place to claim. My parents long for home; I find it most often in their eyes, always searching for a memory to land on. On nights when they wake up without fireflies guiding their eyes or the sticky summer sweat heavy on their breathing, they remind themselves they are doing this for their children. Come Ramadan, or Eid, any achievement or distinction, there is no one to call and bring home for dinner. With family oceans away and distance no shorter than before, the memories of their childhood are fast becoming too strong. They fear they may forget why they left home in the first place, so at night they carefully uck away the memories, but they cannot hide how fierce the pull of home can be. I have found it in their eyes. We 316 lear"ing to become shape shifters, as we wait for an Australian passport so we don't have to be shamed in immigration lines. 1 am beginning to realize, when our passports are no longer green, our skin will remain the same. An olive colour, made of the earth. We have never known how to be anything else. Never known another language or another home. It is not easy to erase your own bloodline or distance yourself from your own memories. When your country has been birthed by sacrifice, you hold the pain of incision close to your chest. You can never forget how thick blood can run, or fiercely it runs within you. I am told to remain silent when it is necessary to speak up. To hold back, when it is necessary to push back, defiance rages in me. After all, my bloodline has no history of being unhinged, or unnerved. I have inherited Lahore's missing parts from my parents and written them into a poem. At night, I unwrap its secrets and hold its pulse close to my chest. At dawn, refusing to surrender, I pick up my pen, anchor it to ink and layit in a desert, hoping the sound will ricochet off the earth, gather wind and sweep across this land as a gale storm. Its thunder will build silence into slogans and weave truth into a song. It will be the anthem of this earth. It will run thicker than defiance within us all. Till then, being anchor-less means I can take up any cause and call it mine. It means they will never find my roots. It means I will grow in the wild. I will learn to be strong on my own. When I die, it means they will bury me in the sky. This ink my garment, this voice my tombstone.