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    Sisters' Entrance
    Sisters' Entrance
    Sisters' Entrance
    Ebook125 pages50 minutes

    Sisters' Entrance

    By Emtithal Mahmoud

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    About this ebook

    Brimming with rage, sorrow, and resilience, this collection traverses an expansive terrain: genocide; diaspora; the guilt of surviving; racism and Islamophobia; the burdens of girlhood; the solace of sisterhood; the innocence of a first kiss.  Heart-wrenching and raw, defiant and empowering, Sisters’ Entrance explores how to speak the unspeakable. 
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAndrews McMeel Publishing
    Release dateMay 29, 2018
    ISBN9781449496708
    Author

    Emtithal Mahmoud

    Emi Mahmoud is the reigning 2015 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and 2016 Woman of the World Co-Champion. One of BBC's 100 Most Inspirational Women of 2015, Emi studied Anthropology and Molecular Cellular & Developmental Biology at Yale University and is a Darfur native from the heart of Philadelphia. A UNHCR High Profile Supporter, a Yale Global Health Fellow and Leonore Annenberg Scholar, Emi dedicates her time to spreading understanding through poetry and advocacy, particularly for the cause of refugees and disadvantaged communities the world over. She was a TedMed 2016 speaker, the closing speaker for Yale University’s 2016 graduation ceremony, and has partaken in multiple White House round-table discussions, including a session with President Obama. She has presented at multiple United Nations' events, opening and closing for the Secretary General. In December, she spoke at the Laureates and Leaders Summit in New Delhi to help launch the historical 100 Million child advocacy campaign alongside the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi and 14 other Nobel laureates and Leaders. Emi is a member of the Philanthropy Age How to Do Good speaking tour, and a Hedgebrook writing fellow, entering profound spaces, across countless audiences worldwide.

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    • 5/5
      absolutely great writing & poetry. made me cry like a baby during a rainy day.
    • 2/5
      Only liked Millennial

    Book preview

    Sisters' Entrance - Emtithal Mahmoud

    For anyone who’s ever grown up,

    for anyone who’s ever had to grow up;

    and for Fofo and for Monteha and

    for all my sisters and for my brothers,

    and for my mother three times

    and then my father.

    contents

    The Girl with Ribbons in Her Hair

    Sometimes God Answers

    The Life of a Refugee Is Counted in Moments

    Stand Up to Allah

    We Never Hire Gravediggers

    Index

    the girl with

    ribbons in her hair

    People Like Us

    Memories of my childhood live

    between the rings of sand around my ankles

    and the desert heat in my lungs.

    I still believe that nothing washes

    worry from tired skin better than the Nile

    and my grandma’s hands.

    Every day I go to school

    with the weight of dead neighbors

    on my shoulders.

    The first time I saw bomb smoke,

    it didn’t wind and billow like the heat

    from our kitchen hearth.

    It forced itself on the Darfur sky,

    smothering the sun

    with tears that it stole

    from our bodies.

    The worst thing about genocide

    isn’t the murder, the politics, the hunger,

    the government-paid soldiers

    that chase you across borders

    and into camps.

    It’s the silence.

    For three months, they closed the schools down

    because people like us are an eyesore.

    The first month, we took it.

    The second, we waited.

    The third month, we met underneath the date palm trees,

    drinking up every second our teachers gave us,

    turning fruit pits into fractions.

    On the last day, they came with a message

    Put them in their place.

    We didn’t stand a chance.

    Flesh was never meant to dance

    with silver bullets.

    So we prayed for the sun to come

    and melt daggers from our backs.

    Lifted our voices up to God

    until the clouds were spent for weeping

    and the sand beneath our toes

    echoed with the song of every soul

    that ever walked before us.

    I hid underneath the bed that day

    with four other people.

    Twelve years later and I can’t help but wonder

    where my cousins hid when the soldiers

    torched the houses,

    threw the bodies

    in the wells.

    If the weapons didn’t get you,

    the poison would.

    Sometimes, they didn’t want to use bullets

    because it would cost them more than we did.

    I’ve seen sixteen ways to stop a heart.

    When you build nations on someone’s bones

    what sense does it make to break them?

    In one day, my mother choked on rifle smoke,

    my father washed the blood from his face,

    my uncles carried half the bodies

    to the hospital,

    the rest to the grave.

    We watched.

    For every funeral we planned

    there were sixty we couldn’t.

    Half the sand in the Sahara

    tastes a lot like powdered bone.

    When the soldiers came,

    our blood on their ankles,

    I remember their laces,

    scarlet footprints on the floor.

    I remember waking to the sound

    of hushed voices in the night

    etched with the kind of sorrow

    that turns even the loudest dreams

    to ash.

    Our parents came home with broken collarbones

    and the taste of fear carved

    into their skin.

    It was impossible to believe in anything.

    Fear is the coldest thing in the desert,

    and it burns you—

    bows you down to half your height

    and owns you.

    And no one hears you,

    because what could grow

    in the desert

    anyway?

    August

    Remorse is my grandmother’s pear

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