Amreeka

By Wael Almahdi

give me your arabs, your persians, your chaldeans, your turks, your bengalis, pothwaris, nepalis and gurkhas, indians and pakistanis, your muslim nuristanis, your parachas and hindkos, armenians and sindhis (both -iāns and -ānīs), egyptians and libyans, your tamils and malayalis, goans and awans, azeris, iranians, your dom and hazara, your pashtuns and tajiks, uzbeks and uyghurs, your chechens and shapsug, daghistanis and georgians, abkhaz, ossetians, your sikhs and punjabis, your muhajirs, your karāchīwāle, your memons, your syrians, iraqis, yazidis, your shia and sunnis, ahmedis, aghakhanis, your bohra, your zaidis, your bahais, abadhis, yemenis, and saudis, gulf arabs, bahrainis, ahwazis and baloch, your syeds and ashrāf, your afghans, and kurds (in turkey iran rojava iraq ), your siddis, your sindhis, your outcasts and hijras, your bedoons, palestinians, your awans and gujjars, jats and mandaeans, north africans, jordanians, siraikis and baltis, alawites and alevis, ismailis and hindus, your parsis, zoroastrians, your lebanese and druze, cypriots from both sides, your bosnians, albanians, kazakh and kyrgyz awadhis dakhanis, your tunisians, moroccans, your hui and sahrawis, touareg and amazigh, your kashmiris and somalis, turkmen and tatars crimeans, maronites, roma, brown christians and white muslims, both converts and long-standing, and all eastern churches.

 

keep, ancient peoples, your eastern stories.

give your impoverished masses, yearning for normalcy

the wretched bodies of unequal societies

send these, the futureless, the drowned, to me

to the lips of nihilism, consumerism

they’ll forget their nānī’s proverbs

within a single generation

 

Note: Amreeka: how America is pronounced in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. This poem is inspired of The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus.

Wael Almahdi is a poet from Bahrain. He has worked in Arabic English translation for 20 years and writes poems exploring the experiences of an Easterner in an Anglocentric world. His work has been published in ArabLit Quarterly Magazine and La Beletra Almanako.