Lessons from Holocausts (after the Florida Attorney General Tried to Cancel Our Conference)
Alhamdulillah is the first thing my people taught me to say when
beat down—as they often are—by the wind, the man, & in this
case, the State’s Attorney General. Two years since our last shutdown, we’ve
devolved, streaking the mirror of progress, ‘til we’re back at 9
Eleven. And I never knew how slippery this descent
feels, hyperaware of pick axe-n-cramponing into
glaciers. Greatness doesn’t quite describe the state of
heeding hue & cry of the area racist. Taking up his
Islamophobic agenda, but-for another religion would be called
jihad. I’m no scholar, but can struggle be for the purpose of
killing Saturday morning Asalaamualaykums, bounce houses &
lavender lattes? Does anyone stop to wonder what we do, us
Muslims, people of the city & suburbs, pitchers’ mounds & soccer pitches,
Never Again-learners, who sat beside you in 8th grade
only to learn it doesn’t apply to us, the perennial
pillagers, scary word speakers, hoarders of bolts of fabric
quilted into this country since the supposed quest for
religious freedom brought domino-dressed, maximalist-buckled
slave traders, and with them no less than one in every
ten Africans who became American said Alhamdulillah. Do you
understand? Ban our meetings, our speakers, our bazaars but our
valid stake in this dream remains rooted like lines in our raised hands.
Who’s to say why our seat at this thanks-given table is always
x-changed for our microphone, spotlight on centerstage to say exactly
y we deserve the same space to congregate, shoot the shit, eat a
zillion chocolate-covered dates and Turkish delights, taste the roses.
Katherine Shehadeh is a poet based in Miami, Florida, where she is pursuing her MFA at Florida International University. Her recent poetry appears in Witness, Laurel Review, ArabLit Quarterly, and others. Find her on Instagram @katherinesarts or on the www at www.katherinesarts.com.
Read other Letters to America online or in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published in partnership with Trinity University Press.
Header photo by Artiom Photo, courtesy Shutterstock.
