Other Words for Home

by Jasmine Warga

There is an Arabic proverb that says: The offspring of ducks float. It means, all children end up like their parents. I guess I am starting to float.

I am learning how to be sad and happy at the same time.

Don’t laugh, she says and her voice cracks, thick with emotion, driving a rushing river between us, with her on one side and me on the other bank. I want to swim back toward her, but for the first time ever, I’m not sure how.

I’ll write to you every day, I say. Promise? I nod and the river that rushed between us before begins to dry up and even though I am leaving and she is staying, it feels like we’re standing on the same shore again.

is so strange to feel lucky for something that is making my heart feel so sad.

America, like every other place in the world, is a place where some people sleep and some people other people dream.

Back home, food was rice lamb fish hummus pita bread olives feta cheese za’atar with olive oil. Here, that food is Middle Eastern food. Baguettes are French food. Spaghetti is Italian food. Pizza is both American and Italian, depending on which restaurant you go to. Every food has a label. It is sorted and assigned. Just like I am no longer a girl. I am a Middle Eastern girl. A Syrian girl. A Muslim girl. Americans love labels. They help them know what to expect. Sometimes, though, I think labels stop them from thinking.

Pre is an English preposition that means before. Pre Jude knew the way to all her classes, Pre Jude never showed up late. When I finally find the classroom, everyone else is already sitting at their desks. Mr. Anderson greets me with a patient smile and motions toward an empty desk in the second row on the left side. I walk across the classroom and I feel everyone’s eyes on me.

Pre Jude reveled in her classmates’ attention, but now I just want to blend in.

As I leave her room I think of the Arabic proverb that says: She cannot give what she does not have.

I wonder if it is exhausting to be a tree. To lose something, year after year, only to trust that it will someday grow back.

But then I start to like being able to put into words

the thoughts that are in my head. Grace feels the same way, she tells

me. But do you worry that you’re going to forget your mother tongue? It makes me smile the way Grace calls Korean her mother tongue. That means Arabic is my mother tongue, And it is my mama’s t...

Bad news doesn’t happen in real life the way that it does in movies.

In movies, you are warned. The music gets scary, the sky goes dark, and you can see the shadows coming in.

Near Aleppo. Mama’s voice is barely a whisper but her words thunder in my ears. Aleppo.

Setting syria

Sometimes all you can do is hold on.

Theme

when my sleep breaks and I am filled with a terror of not quite knowing where I am or where I am going. I wrap my arms around her and I hold on, I hold on to that feeling of home.

Theme hold on

read about families stranded on shaky boats, trapped in refugee camps. I search every day for a mention of my brother and I never find one. I search every day for a clue about why I deserve to be here in Aunt Michelle’s kitchen, safe and fed. When so many others just like me are not.

Theme: justice

am learning how it tastes— sweet with promise and bitter with responsibility.

Motif? Lucky

If he is struggling with how you can feel so lucky and unlucky at the very same time.

Motif and theme. Lucky

At first, I think I want to tell them about how brave Issa is how he is risking his life because he believes so much in a better version of his country. But then I think about why I love my brother and I do love that he is brave, but I also love the way his whole body shakes when he laughs

Character: issa

Hoping, I’m starting to think, might be the bravest thing a person can do.

Theme: hope

This is my fifth letter to Fatima. She has not written back once. I try to tell myself it is because she is busy, because she has always been more of a talker than a writer. I don’t let myself think about the other possibilities the scary reasons for why I haven’t heard from her.

Fatima

I think again of that Arabic proverb: He cannot give what he does not have.

Theme. Proverb

But Mama’s funny is more like a cat, slinking around, hiding out in corners, brushing up on you by surprise. Mama, with her perfectly wrapped scarf her clean nails her gentle way of walking on the ground does not seem like she would have a sharp tongue, which makes the fact she is funny, even funnier.

Mama funny

habibti—

Jude

Vocab

Sarah’s black hair, the only part of her that clearly came from my uncle is tangled with sleep and she yawns as Aunt Michelle pushes a plate in front of her. She cranes to look outside at the backyard. Good, she says. It snowed. She forks a piece of pancake into her mouth, and makes a face. Can’t you ever make normal pancakes, Mom?

Sarah

know I should feel stung, but the sound of the thrilling okay is so much louder in my head than weird.

But— I think and my mind floods with all those thoughts that I try my best to keep at bay, that are like wolves in the night, howling that I am not from here, that I don’t belong here, that I will never belong here. Layla’s American, is all I mean to say. She was born here, I add because I can’t help myself. She’s American.

Theme belonging

Jude who was always told, Skety.

Jude

Missing Issa has become a physical ache inside of me, like a rotting cavity that is growing more painful every day.

Jude missing issa

have learned Americans love to say you know and then stop talking. They force you to fill in the hard parts, the things they are not brave enough to say.

Layla, I say, and I hardly ever say her name so that catches her attention. I left home, I flew across an ocean. My brother is missing, in the middle of a war zone. What is there left to be afraid of?

Reminds me of singing to Jim at our wedding

It is hard to find a monologue, it is hard to find a place where my favorite actresses are allowed to speak without a man interrupting them before their full thought has been spoken.

Every time I practice, I think about how wonderful it feels to speak for two whole minutes, with no fear of being interrupted,

I sometimes worry that there is something wrong with me that I so badly want to know that other people see me.

Sometimes I feel like you have to say things out loud just to remind the universe that you’re still thinking about them.

Malala Yousafzai like Kariman Abuljadayel

That I cover my head not because I am ashamed forced or hiding. But because I am proud and want to seen as I am.

There is an Arabic proverb that says: She makes you feel like a loaf of freshly baked bread.

Mrs. Ravenwood’s

Bougie,

Layla is saying is that Americans think it’s normal for there to be violence in places where people like me are from, where people like me and people who look like me live.

She doesn’t give you anything new, but she helps you better see what is already there.

the simplest things are the hardest things to say. That sometimes there is no word for what you feel, no word in any language.

is lovely to be a part of something that feels bigger than you.