The Poetry of Elmaz Abinader
By Aimee Suzara

To enter Abinader’s poetry is to enter a dream, now war-torn barren, now lush with imagination. A true storyteller, Elmaz Abinader unites the memoirist’s attention to detail with the songwriter’s penchant for precision of sound, bringing the reader into intimate relationship with her subjects, be they a family preparing for occupation, a sorrowful woman and “war-addicted” child, or herself as the daughter of Lebanese immigrants. Equipped with her own experiences of emigration and travel throughout North Africa, the Middle East and beyond, Abinader writes about occupied and invaded territories, about forced and voluntary migrations, with a voice that is at once humble and prophetic.

Abinader’s writing spans the terrains of memoir, essay, poetry, and playwriting. Her poetry has earned recognition including the Goldies Award for Literature and the Josephine Miles PEN Oakland Award for her first book of poetry, In the Country of My Dreams… which explores identity, belonging and alienation, and life under occupation or in migration. In Abinader’s memoir, Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey from Lebanon, the author presents the story of a family in Lebanon and their subsequent emigration to the United States. Abinader’s upcoming book, From this Country, is a “journey out and back, to the small town of her birth and to the countries of her culture's birth.”

Abinader’s words cannot be confined to the page. Her story-telling performances, including the three-act play Country of Origin, have been seen throughout the world and earned two Drammies, Oregon's Drama Critics Award. Collaborating with the Country of Origin Band and musical composer Tony Khalife have lent dimension to Abinader’s works.

While utilizing all her faculties as a playwright, performer, and memoirist, the foundation of Abinader’s work remains poetic. The relevant, timely and exquisite physicality of the geographies Abinader’s language inhabits and traverses make her work not only outstanding, but necessary. Her words not only awaken the reader to the poignant realities of her subjects—they are a testament to survival, to the human beings’ ability to persevere and to dream.

(All poems reprinted here except “This House, My Bones,” are from In the Country of My Dreams.)

Off the Wire

“the country with the highest rate of depression is Lebanon.”
“…more women are depressed than men.”

She removes stones from her shoes
and notices her toenails are shell
fragments, shattered by the impact
of her feet smacking the broken
pavement when the sirens shriek.
She no longer hears with her ears,
listens only with her feet. She runs
when a young man whistles at her
and does not look back.

She paces the hall, waits for the pot
of brown water to clear. Smoke gathers
in a mushroom cloud. She has washed
her face with grit, her arms and legs
with mud; her belly with sand.
Her loofah collects granules of her skin
leaving red pulp, her cheeks, open
scars in the wind.

Measure her sadness, the shift downward.
The moon of her heart dips toward the sea.
Shake her body, shout at her unblinking
eyes, scrape the bottom of her feet.
You will feel the chill of time move
through her, rather than her moving
through time.

Her baby still in her christening dress
sleeps on a chair in the kitchen–
the only room intact. Tanks grind
by the sea, rumble in her sleep.
The child’s hands are loose buds
swaying among the reeds. No one
tiptoes or whispers. When the traffic
quiets in the early morning, the baby
clenches her fists.

Babies born war-addicted are hungry
for the quiver of their mothers’ hands
trembling against their cheeks. Rocked
by the rain of stones crumbling
from the walls around them. This is how
they learn to sleep. This is where
their empty hands reach. They learn
to sing underground and never
swallow their sorrow.

This House, My Bones

Enter the house,
Sit at the table covered in gold
A cloth, Sitt embroidered
For the third child=s birth.
Take the tea, strong and minty,
Hold the glass warm
Against your palms, fragrances
Of centuries fill you, sweetness
Rises up to meet you. The youngest boy
Fuad, shows you a drawing
He has made of a horse
You touch his shoulder, stroke
His hair, he loves to talk to strangers
Show them his room filled with posters
Of extinct and mythical animals: dinosaurs,
Unicorns; dragons. You want to linger
In the music of his voice, afraid his disappearance
Is inscribed on shell cases stockpiling in the Gulf.

Enter the mosque,
Admire the arches
Inlaid with sea-colored pebbles,
Follow the carpets, long runners
Of miracles in thread, your feet still damp
Slip against the marble floor.
Spines of men curl into seashells
In the room ahead. Echoes
Of the muezzin shoot around you
Fireworks of speeches and prayers.
Don=t be afraid because they worship
Unlike you. Be afraid that worship
Becomes the fight, faith the enemy;
And yours the only one left standing.

Some one asks, what should we do
While we wait for the bombs, promised

And prepared? How can we ready ourselves?
Do we gather our jewelry and books,
And bury them in the ground? Do we dig
Escape tunnels in case our village is invaded?
Do we send our children across the border
To live in refugee camps remembering us
Only in dreams, ghostly voices calling their names?
What do we pack? The coffee urn father
Brought from Turkey? The pair of earrings
Specially chosen for the wedding day?
How can we ever pack anything if not everything?
If not the tick on the wall marking
The children=s growth, if not the groan
Of the washing machine in the kitchen,
If not the bare spot on the rug
Where Jidd put his feet when he read
The Friday paper?
Help them gather things: brass doorknobs,
Enamel trays, blue glasses made in Egypt,
Journals of poetry, scraps of newspapers, recipes
They meant to try. And what about the things
They cannot hold. The beginning of life and all
The memories that follow. The end of life
And all that is left to do.

Enter the heart
Read the walls and all the inscriptions
The love of lovers, of children and spouses,
The love of stars, and cardamom and long eye lashes.
Tour the compartments telling
The story: that life was begun with faith,
That life may end with folly. See it heave
In fear that threats, predictions and actions
Are a history already written, spiraling,
Loose and out of control. No amount of hope
Can save it. No amount of words can stop it.
Hold the heart. Imagine it is yours.

In the Country of My Dreams…
For Marcel Khalife & Khalil Gibran

The tales my mother and father told me
are true: the apricots are as big
as oranges and bright as the sun.
Grapes sag on the vine from the wealth
of wine already inside them. The figs burst
as you walk through the groves,
begging for you to hold one
and admire the milk cracking their skin.
In the country of my dreams, my sixth grade
geography book explained: Long haired sheep
roam the rocky terrain of Mt. Lebanon
and Mt. Sannin. Oranges in huge bundles
are thrown onto carts pulled by donkeys
to travel west from the Bekka Valley.
Silk spins on spools and every woman’s
fingers are blistered from piercing
her intricately embroidered fabric.

A 1945 National Geographic described it as
a small country bordered by Palestine
to the south, Syria to the north
and east. Peopled by Arabs, Christians,
Muslims, Jews, Druse, Kurds, Armenians,
Bedouins, Europeans, everyone is welcome.
A tourist economy with a multi-lingual population.
Christ once walked its hillsides.

In the country of my dreams, the guide books
tell me, the ancients left their treasures
at Sidon and Tyre, that the Romans landed
their temples in Ba-albek, that the sea
is the color of the finest jewels, lapis
and turquoise. Gold can be found
in the shops, on the arms of women,
in the teeth of men, hanging from the tiny
lobes of daughters, like pieces of stars.

Now the newspapers say, a fire burns
in the country of my dreams, wicked and consuming,
flying from the hands of soldiers, from the mouths
of children who have been raised by war. Smoldering
on the lips of mothers, heads bent praying
to God, to Allah, to anyone who will listen.
That we cannot travel freely and sanctioned.
We are dangerous to ourselves
and our friends.

But they are not listening. In the country
of my dreams, no one plots invasions with
armies of soldiers. From the edge
of the sea, it’s our poets who set sail,
mouths full of music, our painters and musicians,
artists and philosophers. Armed
with an infantry of voices, people rise
and sing, clap their hands and whirl
in circles and stomp,
shouting their name,
their country, signifying their cause.

At the beginning of the century, it is you,
Khalil, who wracks our bodies
so completely, generations clutch
your words to steady their bosoms, year
after year, whisper your phrases at their weddings,
and cultivate gardens to commemorate your name
and no other’s. At the end of the century, it is you,
Marcel, who makes them leap up shouting in gospel,
clutching the hands of their children, dancing
with abandon, and calling out listen, we
are not alone, we do not forget.

To produce such warriors as these:
Gibran and Khalife, takes a soil luscious
and fertile. A fact the books overlooked;
the newspapers failed to see. What we have
to fear from this country is the note held strong,
the stroke of the painter, the string of the oud,
the beat of the drum, hand on skin, fingers
on flute, bells, language that sears our temples
and shakes the silence of memory, agitates
the stillness of history. And we have heroes,
whose instruments are aimed directly
at our hearts, who do not kill us,
but keep us alive.