Mama

I was walking down the street when a man stopped me and said,

Hey yo sistah, you from the motherland?

Because my skin is a shade too deep not to have come from foreign soil

Because this garment on my head screams Africa

Because my body is a beacon calling everybody to come flock to the motherland

I said, I’m Sudanese, why?

He says, ‘cause you got a little bit of flavor in you,

I’m just admiring what your mama gave you

Let me tell you something about my mama She can reduce a man to tattered flesh without so much as blinking Her words fester beneath your skin and the whole time, You won’t be able to stop cradling her eyes. My mama is a woman, flawless and formidable in the same step. Woman walks into a warzone and has warriors cowering at her feet My mama carries all of us in her body, on her face, in her blood and Blood is no good once you let it loose So she always holds us close.

When I was 7, she cradled bullets in the billows of her robes. That same night, she taught me how to get gunpowder out of cotton with a bar of soap. Years later when the soldiers held her at gunpoint and asked her who she was She said, I am a daughter of Adam, I am a woman, who the hell are you? The last time we went home, we watched our village burn, Soldiers pouring blood from civilian skulls As if they too could turn water into wine. They stole the ground beneath our feet.

The woman who raised me turned and said, don’t be scared I’m your mother, I’m here, I won’t let them through. My mama gave me conviction. Women like her Inherit tired eyes, Bruised wrists and titanium plated spines. The daughters of widows wearing the wings of amputees Carry countries between their shoulder blades.

I’m not saying dating is a first world problem, but these trifling motherfuckers seem to be. The kind who’ll quote Rumi, but not know what he sacrificed for war. Who’ll fawn over Lupita, but turn their racial filters on. Who’ll take their politics with a latte when I take mine with tear gas. Every guy I meet wants to be my introduction to the dark side, Wants me to open up this obsidian skin and let them read every tearful page, Because what survivor hasn’t had her struggle made spectacle? Don’t talk about the motherland unless you know that being from Africa means waking up an afterthought in this country. Don’t talk about my flavor unless you know that My flavor is insurrection, it is rebellion, resistance My flavor is mutiny It is burden, it is grit and it is compromise And you don’t know compromise until you’ve rebuilt your home for the third time Without bricks, without mortar, without any other option.

I turned to the man and said, My mother and I can’t walk the streets alone back home any more. Back home, there are no streets to walk any more.

- Emtithal Mahmoud