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"[audioplayer file=\"https://www.rattle.com/audio/BeckHome.mp3\"]\r\n<p class=\"author\"><em>Zeina Hashem Beck</em></p>\r\n<p class=\"title\"><strong>GHAZAL: BACK HOME</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"epil\"><em>for Syria, September 2015</em></p>\r\n\r\n<p><div class=\"line\">Tonight a little boy couldn’t walk on water or row back home.</div>\r\n<div class=\"line\">The sea turned its old face away. Again, there was a <em>no, no,</em> back home.</div></p>\r\n\r\n<p><div class=\"line\"><em>Bahr</em>* is how we were taught to measure poetry, </div>\r\n<div class=\"line\"><em>bahr</em> is how we’ve stopped trying to measure sorrow, back home. </div></p>\r\n\r\n<p><div class=\"line\">“All that blue is the sea, and it gives life, gives life,” says God to the boy </div>\r\n<div class=\"line\">standing wet at heaven’s gate—does he want to return, to go back home?</div></p>\r\n\r\n<p><div class=\"line\">My friend who hates cooking has made that eggplant dish,</div>\r\n<div class=\"line\">says nothing was better than yogurt and garlic and tomato, back home. </div></p>\r\n\r\n<p><div class=\"line\">On the train tracks, a man shouts, “Hold me, hold me,” to his wife,</div>\r\n<div class=\"line\">bites her sleeve, as if he were trying to tow back home.</div></p>\r\n\r\n<p><div class=\"line\">Thirteen-year-old Kinan with the big eyes says, “We don’t want to stay in Europe.”</div>\r\n<div class=\"line\">“Just stop the war,” he repeats, as if praying, <em>Grow, grow back, home</em>. </div></p>\r\n\r\n<p><div class=\"line\"><em>Habibi</em>, I never thought our children would write HELP US on cardboard.</div>\r\n<div class=\"line\">Let’s try to remember how we met years ago, back home.</div></p>\r\n\r\n<p><div class=\"line\">On our honeymoon we kissed by the sea, watched it</div>\r\n<div class=\"line\">rock the lights, the fishing boats to and fro, back home. </div></p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><small>* <em>Bahr</em> is Arabic for sea. Also, in Arabic poetry, <em>bahr</em> means meter.</small>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">—<em>from</em> <a href=\"https://www.rattle.com/chapbooks/3arabi-song/\">3arabi Song</a></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">__________</p>\r\n\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Zeina Hashem Beck</strong>: \"This ghazal is for Syrian refugees, whose stories this week (and every week) are heartbreaking and surreal. The poem refers to many tragedies that we've read about this week: the little <a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees\">toddler drowned</a> in the Aegean sea, the refugees <a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/sep/04/refugee-migration-crisis-live-eu-biggest-test-since-second-world-war\">at the train station</a> in Budapest, that video of the Syrian boy simply saying \"<a href=\"http://qz.com/494714/in-a-powerful-video-a-13-year-old-syrian-boy-nails-the-truth-of-the-refugee-crisis/\">Just stop the war</a>,\" and the video of the man <a href=\"http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/602745/Migrant-family-Hungary-riot-police-lay-TRAIN-TRACKS\">holding on to his wife and baby on the train tracks</a>.\" (<a href=\"http://www.zeinahashembeck.com/\">web</a>)</p>\r\n</blockquote>"
<https://www.rattle.com/ghazal-back-home-by-zeina-hashem-beck/>