The Small Boat Woman

They call me a “small boat person”

Because I went on a diversion

Through the liminal spaces of Limbo -

That consumed the flesh of Moe’s Eggs in Purgatory,

Leaving the yellow juvenile yolk exposed

To a spiced tomato pulp;

The bloodied         

Bodies of boat people

No longer legal.

Drifting corpses.

Vagrant vestiges of colonialism.

Europe’s egoism.

 

I travelled through the harbours of Hell

Wishing Fawwah farewell,

In order to arrive at

The poetic paradise of politics,

Where congenial company is found in the crucifix

On the shores of Sicily.

Now lost in Libya’s Tripoli.

The symbol of the death greets me,

Our salvation.

Now begins lengthy litigation

To secure my status

After a brutal and brief hiatus

In competent decision making.

They said I was ‘faking’

My story -

Crafting a fantasy

As to why I ‘chose’ to cross the sea.

 

An icon of sacrifice.

I left behind my bride price –

A dupable dowry

Unexhaustive in exploitation –

Representative of Arabian riches,

Financed within the milieu of militias.

The Sinai ISIS insurgency

Propelled me towards the sea

Condemning me to Eggs in Purgatory –

Al Basha Restaurant’s debris.

A crumb of culinary splendour.

Ful Mudammas

And Baladi Egyptian Salad –

Combine to create a brutal ballad

For an invalid

Human.

               Sorry, ‘Subhuman’.

 

Saturday at the Serpentine.

Silhouettes sweat beneath the sun -

Undone

By gastronomic gluttony,

Not starved upon the sun-bleached sea.

I witnessed this on the Island of Capri,

When I first arrived

And felt despised

Because I had been colonised,

And sought civilised

Restaurants for refuge;

A drunken deluge –

Of depression and Chianti,

Where beastly

Cannibals feast on the flesh

Of those from Bangladesh;

Pakistan;

Oman;

Turkmenistan;

Sudan;

Afghanistan;

And finally me,

From across the sea...

Egypt.

My soul saturated in Sriracha,

Simmered in sage,

Sautéed in sorrow.

Tomorrow

I will again be a waitress –

Waiting on the wills

Of those given bills

For five minutes of food.

Servitude –

Tattooed

With indelible ink

Into the skin of the woman

                              Who did not sink

When she crossed the sea.

Instead, my body excretes rivers of ghee,

And I dream of grandad’s fig tree,

My mother’s masala chai tea,

And Egypt’s Koshari;

Chick-peas suffocating

Under layers of fried onion –

Lubricating a lowly lentil.

Segmental

Suicide -

The serpent’s kiss of death;

Lady Macbeth’s

Tragic trespass

Into truffle-infused brine.

A sordid stench,

 Seemingly sublime

After four glasses of Hyde Park’s ‘house wine’.

 

The smell of spineless sadism

Rises from blankets of chargrilled cheese;

Rustic repugnancy -

The economic key

For the woman who crossed the sea.