Titkallam*
*”Do you speak?” in Arabic

Deft as surgeons, fish cleaners slice
head to vent, viscera is plucked & tossed

to gulls perched on dhows
bobbing in the Gulf. Sinhala, Gurkhali,

Tagalog, so many tongues merge
with the muezzin’s call to prayer cresting

from minarets all over Doha. I’m privy
to none of this, possessing my only tongue.

I asked for an essay about loss
and Manar Ahmad Al-Muftah recalled

her childhood when she learned the curving body
of Kha’a, its dots were sparkling earrings on

an elegant lady. The character for Raa’ was a girls’ braid, and
Laam her father’s fishing hook.

As Arabic grows scarce, Nuun, once
a bag of flour with a hand above is

now a bowl of sadness
with a tear hanging over.

She fears her language is in danger
of extinction like Aaqool, the camel thorn, that grows

in salt and waste, and whose solitary
bloom attracts grazing camels

and people who believe it cures
everything. Here at the water’s edge

Sinhala, Gurkhali, Tagalog and Arabic washes
over me, I hear only music

dazzling as fish shimmer in the sun.

Artist’s Statement

Titkallam marks both a personal, and geographic transition. I wrote this poem shortly after arriving to teach at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Doha, Qatar. When oil and gas was discovered in Qatar in the 1940’s it propelled this small country away from a past of pearl diving, to a present of massive construction and development. In the interest of using this newfound wealth to invest in the future, and under the auspices of His Highness Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, a great adventure in education was untaken. Top programs from all over the United States have been brought into Qatar to create what is known as Education City, a sprawling twenty-five hundred acre campus on the outskirts of Doha. VCUQ was the first school to arrive in 1997, but it has since been joined by Georgetown, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon and the Weill Cornell Medical College.

Most of the poems I wrote before coming here were mined from my past, the stories I lug around with me, and I think, can be written anywhere. This poem, however, could only have been written here; in Doha, Qatar. This is the first poem I wrote after embarking on an adventure that has immersed me in another culture. It marks a journey, where everyday I am learning to celebrate commonalities, and understand and respect differences.