I love to tell you where I am from.
I look forward to the moment when
the nine letters
I utter evoke a contortionist’s masterpiece
on the faces of polite company.
I love to tell you where I am from.
I relish the dive into histories
bloodied with conflicts
dreamt up by egomaniacs,
the meander through memories
of war-torn summers,
a roster of lost battles
like an adolescent playlist.
I love to tell you where I am from.
I anticipate the raised eyebrow,
the sanctimonious correction of my
interpretation of events
by the pundits you’re sure know better
about what I have lived.
I love especially the commiseration,
the void which the well-intentioned must cross,
wobbling over the swamp of unknowns and foreign,
throwing out hummus! and Petra!
like lifelines.
I love to tell you where I am from.
That place with a name charged as an electric fence,
my story a barbed-wire cautionary tale,
my homeland an invitation to spar.
Previously published in the Turkish, on-line journal Human, June 2014