By Kiana Borjian
first day of “Women in Islamicate Societies:”
Why are you taking this class?
I begin swirling
like the dervishes
my mother is named for: Sufi
plus an “e”
I am jealous of her name –
the way it suits her worried eyes,
sacred face. What she knows
about Islam: not being able to join
swim team after the revolution. I dread
swimming, feigned a shoulder injury
to get out of water polo.
What I know about Islam:
climbing on my grandfather’s back,
the guttural whisper of his prayer
whirling around his spine, images
of birds and men with beards bordered
in emerald and gold. Do you think
my grandparents would accept my sexuality?
I ask my mother. You know
early examples of homosexuality are found
in Islam, in the harems my mother says.
I live in the gold embossed margins of my grandfather’s poetry books,
of my binder paper I struggle to fill
with notes. I have anxiety, so
I am not a history major. Or –
history sends me spiraling
into the recesses of my mother’s name
the photo albums of her mother’s mother and her mother’s mother
who look the way my mother taught me not to:
hair bridging their brows,
above their lips. My body
like history: uninhabitable, scarred,
erased, hairy.
