by Dana Alsamsam
Sister you came into the world
silent & expecting
to listen your father’s voice
whispering into your right ear
these holy words to call you
into a life of worship
His voice
was the first voice I heard
like many daughters
& their fathers
& the recitation
of this ghostsong
Assalatu khairum-minan-naum
Prayer is better than sleep
But you my sister heard only
frantic calls clipped
conversations the echo
of emergency waking you
into a world that won’t get
any quieter I know our father
does not have any sweetness
left to rub on your gums
He is too tired to teach you
the many steps of cleansing
before prayer as he taught me
his devotion washed away
in the silt & the sand
his prayer only ritual a performance
of memory He kneels
stands no longer feels urgency
Hayya ‘ala-s-Salah Hayya ‘ala-s-Salah
Hayya ‘ala-l-Falah Hayya ‘ala-l-Falah
Hurry to the prayer Hurry to the prayer
Hurry to Salvation Hurry to Salvation
Hurry to me sister & I will try
to teach you that soap
is not the same as purity
but sometimes this water is all we have
to scrub the shame passed down
My sister you & I
are both unholy daughters
the same despite our beginnings
Sleep it calls to us
Dark it calls to us
I admit sister I still remember
what the Adhan sounds like
The calm urgency of its calling
across the dawn the night
the day but I have forgotten
to what world
this incantation calls us
I have forgotten its meaning
In Islam, the earliest tradition that we experience in our lives is our father whispering the Adhan, or the call to prayer, into our right ear. This tradition blesses the child and welcomes them into a life of worship and godliness. My youngest sister did not experience this ritual, however, because she was born quickly in the passenger seat of my father’s car on the way to hospital. Years later, my parents would divorce and I had started my own adult life outside of my parents’ house. My little sister and father were essentially alone, and it broke my heart to see my father struggling, and my little sister coming of age in such a different reality. I wanted to protect her from the evils that young women experience in this world. I used the birth ritual to highlight the difference between myself and her, but then collapse that difference throughout the poem. Is there any real difference between us when I had strayed so far from the path my father wished for me anyways? When I had succumbed so many times to a life that was unholy?
Dana Alsamsam is a first generation Syrian-American from Chicago and is currently based in Boston where she works in arts development. A Lambda Literary fellow, she received her MFA in Poetry from Emerson College where she was the editor-in-chief of Redivider and senior editorial assistant at Ploughshares. She is the author of a chapbook, (in)habit (tenderness lit, 2018), and her poems are published or forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, The Shallow Ends, The Offing, Tinderbox, Salamander, BOOTH, The Common, and others.