Immigrant's Song

Let us not speak of those days when coffee beans filled the morning with hope, when our mothers’ headscarves hung like white flags on washing lines. Let us not speak of the long arms of sky that used to cradle us at dusk. And the baobabs – let us not trace the shape of their leaves in our dreams, or yearn for the noise of those nameless birds that sang and died in the church’s eaves. Let us not speak of men, stolen from their beds at night. Let us not say the word disappeared. Let us not remember the first smell of rain: It will only make us nostalgic for childhood. Instead, let us speak of our lives now — the gates and bridges and stores. And when we break bread in cafes and at kitchen tables with our new brothers, let us not burden them with stories of war or abandonment. Let us not name our old friends who are unravelling like fairytales in the forests of the dead. Naming them will not bring them back. Let us stay here, and wait for the future to arrive, for grandchildren to speak in forked tongues about the country we once came from. Tell us about it, they might ask. And you might consider telling them of the sky and the coffee beans, the small white houses and dusty streets. You might set your memory afloat like a paper boat down a river. You might pray that the paper whispers your stories to the water, that the water sings it to the trees, that the trees howl and howl it to the leaves. If you keep still and do not speak, you might hear your whole life fill the world until the wind is the only word.