Kufr Qa’ra, Palestine
I recall the bus ride from Jerusalem. On the phone in Arabic. Soldiers in uniform look at
me. I switch to English. The acceptable colonial language.
My friend greets me descending the bus at the town center. Soldiers stare on my back.
Their next stop will be a settlement built in a circle. The only way in is occupation.
Several nights my friend and I are saahiraan, staying-up-late through the night. We
drink red wine from Spain in chipped glasses. Olives always on the table.
Every night a wedding. I’m welcome to all but one. Men eye me
when I sit at dinner, eye me in a debkah dance circle, eye my hands on the phone.
Ente jaasus? Are you a spy? They ask. Laa. No, I say. That’s just what a spy would say.
We laugh a nervous laugh through the dinner, the debka, ‘til I leave. Hands out of
pockets.
The night before I get on a bus to return to Jerusalem, my friend describes the field
we’ve been looking out on half-drunk between moon-time and passing out.
The soft soil in summer. The winter dust. The orchard on the other side we can’t see.
How do you know what’s on the other side? I ask. It was my grandfather’s, he says.
The kibbutz gave us eggplant at harvest time for years out of guilt.
I ask, What happened after that? He says, The Army took it from the kibbutz.
Gave them the fair market price. I ask, What was that? My friend answers.
The answer is spoken. The speech crosses the table. The table remains silent.
The speech reaches my ears. My ears understand the language. The language is
English.
The language is Arabic. The language sinks into my heart. My hear continues beating. ---
9/20/2024
Alex Vartan Gubbins was born in Chicago, grew up in Wisconsin, and just recently moved from the Detroit area to Armenia. His poetry has recently been published in Arteidolia, Sour Cherry Mag, and FOI Faineant Press. Gubbins received a Witter Bynner translation grant for Arabic. His translations have been published in Asymptote, Diode, and Metamorphoses.
