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I

When will we go to Damascus again.

When will we congregate around tables, 

round ones.

Some big and almost angular,  like a hexagon.

Others small, only fit for four. 

Maybe my Grandmother’s table was never round.

On second thought, I am pretty sure now – it was not.

I haven’t had her homemade Labneh 

from the deep, glass Tupperware with the blue lid. 

Always the deep, glass Tupperware with the blue lid, 

it’s been 13 years. 

And they are becoming countless years. 

We just don’t congregate around tables anymore.

We don’t huddle over the perfection 

that is my Tete’s Fasouliyeh Bzait.

Shifting between the impossible choice 

of dipping the bread in the oily tomato sauce; 

or folding a Fasouliyeh with some garlic 

in the midst of the grainy piece of bread between our fingers. 

We don’t sit there, feet raised on the chair across

To cry, or laugh, or whisper. 

Or even to wait for the phone to ring and pick it up 

before anyone else hears it at that ungodly hour.

My Tete is not with us anymore

and that is why I don’t go to Damascus.

II

The haemorrhaged city, despite the burials, is patient and it waits,

the same table, the same chairs. They wait.

Now, it’s my mother who sits there, instead.

She holds her breath for me

and for her grandchildren

to come in and out of those seats.

For time to pass non-chalantly

in fast-forward and slow-motion at once.

She wants nothing more than for my children’s faces to change

and their frames to shift,

from kids to grown-ups as they

go about their lives in that kitchen.

Their back turned half the time. 

Their fingers folding bread,

Indulging THEIR Tete’s Labneh and Fasouliyey Bzait.

Just as I did.

We came and we went and my Tete –

she sat at that table. 

My Tete, with her heartily laughter, her love language: food.

And her 1AM tears

that we didn’t speak of the next morning.

Damascus knows all those secrets.

Whispers and glances over fragrant food and makeshift ashtrays;

because Jiddo didn’t know that I smoked.

A city sworn to solemn secrecy that it never keeps.

And while I may yearn for a permanent seat at the table,

Damascus can no longer guarantee 

what shape it will be in

when I next decide to pull up a chair.

Like a love language that’s lost its meaning,

I don’t congregate around tables anymore. 

So how can I go to Damascus?

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*Little Glossary of some terms (and if you know, you know!)

Tete: Grandmother

Jiddo: Grandfather

Labneh: Strained, yoghurt, almost like a cottage cheese, but so much better.

Fasouliyeh Bzait: Flat green beans in garlic tomato sauce, best served out of the fridge.