March 22 2021 was my 5 year mark living outside the homeland, and since then, my memory has been a fluctuating graph of what I remember from living in Iraq, and what mama’s 5am careful to wake me up steps remind me of.
— tw: war —
My mind often aches for a repeated sensation, especially of when my 6 year old hand swapped the small palm tree’s leaves, attempting to check if the tree was sweaty during Iraq’s hot middle eastern climate — violent. Whenever the nervous reminder pops up in my brain that I am kilometers away from where my roots trench deep in my grandparent’s front yard, I call mom for a story. A numbing happiness of what it was like being an Iraqi child hearing soccer balls and Kuwaiti TV Shows, news strictly at 8PM and grandma’s morning dua(prayer.)
This time, standing in my friend’s kitchen as they cook a Syrian meal called Mejadra, my Arabic fails me again as we talk about the best Arab dessert spots growing up. Clinging onto the letters of plausibly the best sweets I’ve ever heavenly consumed, as the pistachio aftertaste hugs my taste buds, I call mama for assistance.
Me: “Mama, what’s the dessert spot in Baghdad called that we always bought when trav-”
Mom and I: “Halawyat Abu Afif!”
The sigh of happiness and relief settled in my body as I finally recovered another Arabic name and unlocked another memory. Recently, I have been struggling with losing my Arabic since moving to the States. The assimilation of language in order to survive is a colonial premise, so every time I remember an Arabic word or know the meaning of one, I view it as a personal win against imperialism. Colonization of the motherland extends to colonization of my mother tongue, and I thank my mom for attending to my roots as the globe revolves around uprooting us from our identities that don’t fit the white personhood agenda.
Nonetheless, mama’s following words gormandized my timed joy with anger: “the store in Basra is closed though” where I lived growing up, “because of war. it’s fully abandoned; broken windows from nearby shrapnel and a tilted sign with ‘Abu Afif Sweets’ carved in Arabic calligraphy.”
See what I mean by colonization of the motherland and mother tongue? It holds a lingering impact, growing up an Iraqi kid on the bombed end of the world, then moving to the bombing side of the planet. Everyday I gradually realize the uncovered trauma of a bombed childhood.
I remember growing up with an implied understanding to detach myself from everything — places, people, routine, habits, etc. It was a robust reminder: every time my aunt left the house and we would hug her like it’s the last time, or whenever I admirably talk about my new friend from kindergarten and my grandmother’s gentle nudge to not let myself get attached. Until the conversation with mama about Abu Afif, I always questioned my family’s unsettling need for such, what I thought was, an alienating mindset towards the world around us. After that phone call, the glimmering pain attacking my soul like reflective sunlight through broken glass was my answer. They weren’t alienating, they were protecting.
Realizing that my grandparents’ entire lifetime has been spent going through war after another was a not so intimate feeling, but it fostered a skin to skin intimate understanding of their growing protectiveness. The countless times they didn’t let me play soccer outside, or their need to provide everything before I even ask for it just so I don’t have to go get it alone.
Comprehending the middle of the circle reasoning for why my upbringing in Iraq was inordinately specific and inexplicable, despite its harrowing awakening, sprouted a momentous forgiveness for my family’s scarcity mindset when it came to attachment. That their constant encounters with loss and grief were and still are unhealed, unraveled, and imperialistically silenced wounds of war — that it isn’t solely about the sandbags placed in front of the windows or the prepared basement in case American or Iranian missiles are launched at any minute of any day, but it’s also the unprepared for goodbyes or the domino effect of of our loved ones’ collateral life stories and restful bodies.
After that phone call, I realized the privilege in comfortably referring to places from our childhoods, and knowing those places still exist today. Without having to call a family member to ask whether that ice cream spot is still running, and whether the burger stop in the corner was bombed or it was just regular renovations. Without having to ask a follow up question about what war it was, what terrorist group, or whether it was an American or British aircraft or anti-tank weapon.
I also soulfully grasped the harmful and desensitizing western world views on war, centering the trauma of soldiers and military personnel, but hardly ever highlighting the unchosen, unsigned up for trauma of civilians and natives of those bombed places. The generationally passed down, everlasting war and terror based lifestyles. The totality of my grandparents’ lives circle back around to war. Even as they tend to enjoying family and friends in their retired years, their moments, reactions and live sentiments will always carry the time my uncle almost died because he was on the phone, walking in the living room where there was no protection around the windows, and the War Emergency Alert System went off announcing the back and forth launching of missiles.
I missed out on Abu Afif visits because of war, and now I can never think about their Iraqi delights without feeling my memories burn within my mental, and without weighing all the times my young uncle and I raced to the kitchen to grab the Abu Afif platters and giggled our way into a plate decorating competition after dinner.
