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Naomi Shihab Nye: Where We Live in the World Is Never One Place

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Naomi Shihab Nye: Where We Live in the World Is Never One Place voice that pursues to cross the cultural divide, arguing that the poet’s Arab- American lineage is the very means by which to implement a language of communion, not a language of division. Naomi Shihab Nye: Where we live in the world is never one place. Our hearts, A Border- Crossing Voice those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us Anan Alkass Yousif moons before we are ready for them University of Baghdad You and I on the roof at sunset, Our two languages adrift, heart saying, Take this home with you2 Abstract: The author writes: Acknowledging her Palestinian and Nye’s numerous volumes of poetry, which span from the 1980s to American origins, Naomi Shihab Nye (1952–) once said: “I didn’t fear the present, have always scrutinized issues of people who suffer differences. In fact, I loved them. This is one of the best things about from segregation in terms of their ethnic, cultural, and geographic growing up in a mixed family or community.” 1 Being born to a Pales- roots. How Nye draws on her Palestinian origin and her American tinian father and an American mother, she came to be multiculturally upbringing to discern the connections between the two has al- oriented. For the past decades, Nye has gained great recognition for ways been a question in her poetry. Providing a different image for her poetry and prose writings about cultural differences, heritage, and envisioning Arabs apart from the stereotype used in mainstream peace. Her wide and multiple perspectives of a world of various ethnic American mass media is equally important in her poetry. In this traditions were crucial not only to her poetic groundwork for a new regard, she says, in the introduction to her volume 19 Varieties of network of human relations but also to her interest in the multifaceted Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002): “Arab Americans had the identities of people. It is the purpose of this article to explore Nye’s poetic additional sadness of feeling the Middle East was rarely repre- sented in a balanced way in the mainstream U.S. media.”3 Nye 1. Naomi Nye Shihab, ed. The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from feels that it is her task as an Arab American to create a third space the Middle East (New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1998), vii. 2. Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (New York: Claritas: Journal of Dialogue and Culture, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2019) Greenwillow, 2002), 34. 30–42 © 2019 3. Nye, xiv. CLARITAS | Journal of Dialogue & Culture | Vol. 8, No. 1 (2019) 30 beyond cultural boundaries to generate a cultural understanding “for nourishment and for noticing, for the way language and im- of the Arab world. agery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connect- A year after 9/11, Nye stated: “All of us who have a loving con- ing it more successfully than any news channel we could name.”7 nection to the Middle East have a responsibility to represent parts Stories of farmers, villagers, family life, and landscape that she of the culture . to counter the bad news.”4 She adds, “All of us, observed in Palestine were inscribed in her mind and found their whoever we are, we’re all in positions as human beings to bridge way eventually into her poetry. Nye’s poetic output evolved to be things.”5 This longing to be a human bridge in implementing em- part of neither formalist nor modernist contemporary poetry but pathetic perception among cultures and nations runs through both became simply free verse written in an accessible language, reach- her early and her later poems. Her poetry scrutinizes the lives of ing American and non- American readers alike. the common Arab people in general and Palestinians in particular In the title poem of her first volume, Different Ways to Pray: Poems and their daily life with the aim of finding some peaceful harbor (1980), Nye articulates a counter- sublime of universal human con- in the face of their social and political turmoil. nectivity with the Middle East by emphasizing the Middle Eastern Living in Palestine between 1967 and 1970, when she attended way of prayer. She lists different ways of worshiping and appealing high school in Ramallah, witnessing the 1967 Arab- Israeli War, to God—whether by kneeling, raising the arms to heaven, making and visiting the Middle East several times after becoming a poet pilgrimages dressed in white, or bending to kiss the earth—and exposed Nye to Arab culture, language, and the importance of so indicates that what matters is the very act of prayer that unites writing. She was fascinated by her Arab background, people’s life- people. Suffering the same pain brings people together and gives styles, and their love for the oral storytelling tradition, which her them solace. In an overflowing narrative style, she ruminates on grandmother, Sitti Khadra, embraced. Persis M. Karim notes, in her memories in Jerusalem, where she saw Palestinians kneel in Contemporary American Women Poets: “It was also during her stay worship to God, “Allah,” imploring him to hear their prayers: in Palestine that Nye began to sing, play guitar, and write songs. Her background in music and her particular interest in the oral There was the method of kneeling, story telling tradition of the Middle East have contributed to her a fine method, if you lived in a country unique style—articulated in her poetry through her use of lon- where stones were smooth. ger, rhythmic lines.”6 For Nye, poetry became a crucial medium . Under the olive trees, they raised their arms— 4. Quoted in Jennifer Ackerman- Haywood, “Free Verse: GVSU Poetry Event Ex- Hear us! We have pain on earth! pects Full House,” (Grand Rapids: Grand Rapids Press, 2002): A1–A4. We have so much pain there is no place to store it! 5. Ibid. 6. Catherine Cucinella, ed., Contemporary American Women Poets: An A- to- Z Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), 253. 7. Nye, xiv. CLARITAS | Journal of Dialogue & Culture | Vol. 8, No. 1 (2019) 31 But the olives bobbed peacefully These were the ones present at births, in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme. humming quietly to perspiring mothers. At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese, The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses, and were happy in spite of the pain, forgetting how easily children soil clothes. (18–19) because there was also happiness.8 These lines echo Nye’s reflection on her grandmother’s strong In being acquainted with her Arab father’s family customs, lifestyle, faith and her pride for being “called ‘Hajjia,’ to wear white clothes intimate relations, simplicity, pains, and joys, Nye realized how after her pilgrimage. She wanted people to worship in what- faith was an essential part of their lives and culture. In a complete ever ways they felt comfortable. To respect one another.”9 Visiting sense of harmony between people and their land, their prayers are Mecca, this holy place, is for these pilgrims a life- process of love lifted up, seeking God’s help: “Hear us! We have pain on earth!” and work; it is a quest for love of the land and a striving to build The focus on this spiritual dimension highlights the nature of the and rebuild it in a way that resembles the image of the mothers’ human identity in the Middle East: “happy in spite of pain”: constant “stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses / forgetting how easily children soil clothes.” Some prized the pilgrimage, Her visits to her father’s homeland have influenced her out- wrapping themselves in new white linen look on the world. Nye emphasizes how important is to apprehend to ride buses across miles of vacant sand. “human identity” regardless of its origin, heritage, or religion: When they arrived at Mecca they would circle the holy places, Once you know the Middle East, it is impossible to recon- on foot, many times, cile the media identity of the place with the spiritual and they would bend to kiss the earth cultural identity. The human identity. Those of us who care and return, their lean faces housing mystery. that the generosity and humanity of the Middle East not be muted entirely beneath the heartbreaking headlines have While for certain cousins and grandmothers responsibility to speak about it all, when we can. How to the pilgrimage occurred daily, balance images? It is always the question.10 lugging water from the spring or balancing the baskets of grapes. 9. Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, xvii. 8. Nye, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, OR: Eighth Mountain, 10. Quoted in Heather Marie Hoyt, “An ‘I’ for Intimacy: Rhetorical Appeal in Arab 1995), 18. American Women’s Literature” (PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2006), 170. CLARITAS | Journal of Dialogue & Culture | Vol. 8, No. 1 (2019) 32 For her, poetic production “allows people to understand their The instability of her father’s handwriting, wavering between wild- feelings and those of others, which is why, in her poetry, [she] con- ness and neatness, reflects the conflicting situation of the military tinues to write about the Arabs she knows and loves, not the ones and the political repression that his people face. Above all, his who blow up buildings.”11 Her poems are, therefore, endowed with writing signifies the empathy he feels for his fellow people, when new insights into the experiences and resilience of Middle East- seeing them suffer or even be buried alive.
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