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Al Quds (Jerusalem)

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if I gave you my cousin’s bones

would you recognize them?

I have an entire album of faces who look like me

they all have our family’s smile

their lips look like they’re trying to burst out the sides of their faces

their olive skin and hazel eyes are familiar

 

I don’t know a single name

decades of martyrs, I do not recognize

of everyone in my family who has died for

Jerusalem

here

where all the open doors are caskets

 

I imagine my 15 and 16 year old cousins’ bones

I do not recognize them

they were shot

I don’t even know what it sounded like

all I have are photos, and an Aunt who had a stroke

she can’t speak,

but she can scream

and every time I ask her about her boys

her knees buckle

she cries out

and holds onto me so tight even an angel of fire could not take me from her

I imagine their fall, made her earth tremble.

isn’t this the most thorough erasure?

when even the erased don’t remember?

 

if you drew out my lineage

you’d map out the streets of Jerusalem

find tens of dead ends

where so many of the Abu Dawas family have died to claim this city

as their capital

you don’t know how hard it is to erode an entire city

to make sure none of its children remember its sound

I have retraced every syllable of my family name to find it

to see where our blood sticks

you must’ve thought you were finished with this family,

but we are the people of Jesus, able to come back to life like Sunrise.

 

I got enough love

to raise every member of my family from the dirt

till your Israel to fertile soil

regrow every demolished home like wild flower

 

I got enough love to let my aunt to speak again

she will lead the charge home

her sons will march behind her

proudly

 

the rest of the my family will rise up

the earth will quiver as I learn their names

and call them to take what was stolen from us

 

Mohammad

Tariq

 

We are coming

 

Lubna

Ali

Tamar

 

We are coming

Abu Dawas

Father of Lions

will you recognize them?

when we bare our teeth larger than our face allows

 

will you recognize them?

when we take up residence

in the ashes of your promised land?

 

will you recognize my family?

when my aunt, can finally,  hold her boys again?

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A Palestinian American from San Diego, California, Khalid Abu Dawas currently studies at New York University in the Global Liberal Studies program. Khalid’s work appears in Vinyl, Apogee, and on Write About Now. Most recently, competing with the NYU slam team, he placed first at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational in Philadelphia.