A dear friend of mine, @bintiM wrote a piece about a woman who was going through some sort of thing as she was going through her daily domesticated life… she is a great writer and an even greater poet, you can read her story in the above post and read the rest of her blog here
we had been talking about doing a piece together for the longest while and this is a reply of sorts to her blog story, she never finished her story so i sort of winged my reply…
Since im no writer or not a poet… here’s my fusion of words enjoy!
The story of Jasmine/ Inside the mind of Yasmin
I always sat by the window to watch my mother wash her hair
Leg tucked under the lesso i wore to please my father
It makes you more decent always ,he said
So I tore it up and made a couture dress
I remembered the fight we had that led him to build the window seat
I dug my buttocks more firmly in the love filled seat my father built
And watched and waited, now remembering the ritual of the domesticated hair washer
Step 1; She parted her hair with one hand and
tucked her breast under her shirt with the other
Black long coils of stringy mess, story of my life it seemed
washed by the veranda overlooking the tree named after me
Step 2: Coiled down tresses lovingly plaited
One careful weave after another
Lonely manes of hair finding each other in interlacing nimble motherly fingers
Part hair! Oil parted hair! Part hair! Oil parted hair!
This is the rhythm that birthed me
I huddle under humid skies and pretend to listen to the ocean
It rains all the time now, maybe the heavens are trying to wash her guilt away
I pretend to be the dutiful loving daughter
All the while leaning closer, watching her, hating her, loving her all over again
She has to learn to love again, this new mother she doesn’t know, doesn’t understand
Her mother can barely notice her, in her new skirts
She shouts, curses and embraces her new found daughter
I threw my last bui bui out of my apartment in Vermont
I never wanted to ever remember, to come back
To this place I call home
I came back crying, balling my duvet in my hands
I left my sandy haired woman lover, to be here for her
Tearing out my piercings and rubbing out the last of my tattoos
Still fresh from laser removal, now I am broke again
The plastic surgery made me able to look at myself in the mirror again but it cost me
I realised too late, after the uncertain mad dash to this sad coast
I don’t belong here now; I lost my Swahili back there amongst my new Jewish friends
With my sing song accent gone, I was no longer birthed among the coconuts
Raised stealing freshly made chapattis from the pan and mahamris from auntie down the street
An immigrant in my own country
“Oy vey! Why are you leaving us” they cried
The smell coconut oil wafted ever closer
Part! Oil parted hair! Part! Oil parted hair!
Ever a reminder of what it was like to be a mother
To be my mother
Part! Oil parted hair! Part! Oil parted hair!
With the right beat I could make that into a pop song back in the states
The choice she had to make to have her
After what he did to her
And what this new one is doing to her now
Why don’t you leave, I used to ask her when I was a teenage feminist
It was that heady age when I felt everyone was out to get my mother
that I had to protect her, Even from my own gentle father
The fighting, these days, is as endless as this brilliant summer sun
That’s why I came back
Left my golden-haired demi god wondering if I would ever return
His texts ever mournful, his tweets even sadder
On snow filled Sundays I used to remember her long beautiful hair from photographs
I never spared her a thought during the long week but reality came kicking in
On Sundays, it was always the hair washing day that would make me long for her
I would call her and imagine her
Parting hair! Oiling parted hair! Parting hair! Oiling parted hair!
And Smells of home cooked pilau and my father’s pipe
And coconut oil, always the coconut oil
One day I almost followed a Sudanese woman home because she smelt like my mother
even though I knew I was old enough to have registered this as a memory
I took out the photographs of my raven haired mother
photographs of her hypnotic black hair, sometimes in soft, soft waves
her hair flowing down her back the perfect picture of domesticity
in the picture with my father they stood hand in hand
Forbidden lovers
tiny prints of her rope-like braid snaking down her elegant bosom
as she smiled shyly at the camera or was she smiling at him I could never tell
her last smile for him
until today in the market… when she saw him
she was washing her hair praying we wouldn’t notice that she still cared
my mother has the most sensuous love of jasmine, her flower
I wanted to pick some for her but I was afraid I would ruin their creamy purity if I did
I gathered them in my palm and the perfume wafted up to my face
All the while
She Parted hair! Oiled parted hair! Parted hair! Oiled parted hair!
And pretended that she had not happened upon
The father of her firstborn girl, her jasmine lover
Her only returned American become daughter
Who she had named Yasmine hoping he would notice
Leave his wife and run back to her breathlessly
With tears running down his cheeks
like one of those hunky men in her Mexican soap stories
who are always crying and admitting their love for the wrong women
I shut my eyes, and thought of his love for her, their song, his smile
I closed my hands and prayed, so I could make it better for my mother
