This is why we don’t look back
my cousin always held her nose
when she entered
my grandmother’s kitchen
it smelled of garlic
she did not recognize
the whiff of Baghdad
the aroma of the grateful
who cooked in muddy tents
and fed eight children
rationed eggs and semolina
in dented aluminum pots
lucky to have a pot
luckier to have garlic
lucky to know home
The words will do it, I say to myself.
Write more poems. Read more books.
Asht idik—God bless your hands
knead and revive Judeo-Arabic
ancestor language, bone of my jaw
practice until I am sore. The sheep dung
and red hawthorn berries will eventually
burn out, this pot will overflow, quench
this fire, clay ovens crack open
scorching memory.
After all, sheep dung is odorless.
There is no harm in digging dirge deep
to the end.
But digging deep, the cesspool stinks,
the slit a meter deep, a meter wide.
It’s easy to fall in, maybe not drown,
maybe not die, but it fissures.
No x-ray machine can
scan generations.
This is why we don’t look back,
my grandmother says.
Looking back, I nail a small child’s shoe
above my door frame,
instead of my mother’s sad
threadbare slipper.
Looking back, I attach a mezuza
to the doorpost. Even if it means
they'll know I am a Yahudi,
God knows better.
I hang up the sixteen-inch key
that locked my great-grandparents’ Baghdad house.
You need two hands to turn such a key.
It cannot offer protection, but
it reminds me: once
there was a home
to lock.
I was born in a pot of memory, a strong, hot cardamon simmer of Baghdad.
My grandmother stirred in me, lows and highs, the Tigris River of Baghdad.
My grandfather smiles at last, speaks of island swimming days in the A’Ḥîddeqel.
Girls can’t swim, but I swim across the mile-wide bank, a tide ripper of Baghdad.
The spices smell of a strange riot, of running away, a girl by herself in the souq,
seeking mountains of figs, silks and poetry—all the shining silver of Baghdad.
I climb a date tree though it’s too high, though girls aren’t allowed to climb free.
Hands are not for giving away but for clasping, dates, a sweet sliver of Baghdad.
Sometimes I wake up at night and can’t remember which country I’m in.
My mattress is not on a roof under stars dreaming a fever of Baghdad.
The safest place for a woman is in her kitchen, then under her abaya.
Every woman needs an abaya, my heart wears a murmur of Baghdad.
Round boats like doughnuts, row boats for fishing, men, hard working oars.
A girl is like a fish hooked and enjoyed until the very last bone glimmer of Baghdad.
Some cellars are for resting in, cool, dark, away from truth-telling sun.
You can’t take such cellars with you, so you become cool, dark, bitter of Baghdad.
The Great Synagogue seats a thousand worshippers. It has no ceiling.
Who will tell them, the ground is ever-shifting, uprooting a quiver of Baghdad.
A girl from Alliance Israélite Universelle can say mother in four languages.
Even in English I can’t say mother, my tongue a leftover wither of Baghdad.
I’ve never tasted kaymak and kahi drizzled with honey and safety—what I miss the most.
How wonderful to grow fat on clotted cream, water buffalo milk, my never of Baghdad.
Staying, crowned a queen, four sons, a cow worth her weight in gold bangles.
Leaving, for my sons I wring dates, muslin memory, sweet syrup giver of Baghdad.
Play with me Muslim neighbor, Christian neighbor, any neighbor. Eat flat bread.
My fence low, door open, oven hot ready to reopen, see me, a sister of Baghdad.
You can shake all the orchard trees and discover only dates, but I want fine, purple figs.
I find some on the ‘Jewish Bridge’ no one remembers. Come walk a shiver of Baghdad.
Searching for Al-Rashid street I frantically seek my Arabic name, joy and delight.
Hebrew princess, exile echoes empty in my Yahudi blood—a whisper of Baghdad.
my skin is the color
of olive tree roots
spanning continents
in-generated thousands of years
under the Middle Eastern sun
my foremothers were dhimmis
harbored in black hijabs
the color of wailing
my grandmother says
I am not allowed
to wear
she’s my Baghdadi grandmother
replanted near Haifa by the sea
behind a guarded fence
where she learnt to scrub
immigrant tent mud
off her family
she wore dresses
the color of singing flowers
lavender allium blue woodruff
Persian iris the wild pink
and her favorite red roses
today I picked a dandelion
and blew its silvery seeds
far over wild grass
never to forget my grandmother’s
eleventh commandment:
be happy
once she painted henna on my right hand
stuck a soft pink Turkish delight on each finger
to hold up high above my head
brown paint covers
what is bare
wide eyed
it is red
says a small voice inside me
dried blood
what is it to shed
virginity
family
home
home is in henna
home is in blood
home is held up with five sweet fingers
beyond the pearl lulu bangle
beyond the diamond earrings
beyond the citrine pendant
I open my palm
there are no intricate brush patterns
there is only her rivered finger
that draws a circle
birth-wise
round and around she chants
Judeo-Arabic evil eye curses
upon those who might forget
her love
I see the blood
I hold it high I hold it
open always open
to remember
once upon a time
I was her girl
because this evening I burnt the dates
charred like my grandmother’s heart
I attempt another batch
break open plump Medjools
pry open pips
boil until squashy
enough to squeeze
the living daylights out
into dark dripping syrup
to dip bitter
herbs
my grandmother squeezed
regrets and rough journeys
through white muslin
clenched in olive oil fists
until dates wrung dry
and honey spurted sweet
I clasp the same cloth
mine is stained with birth blood
what I mean is I swaddled
my sons and made covenants
in four by four squares
to wrap their circumcisions
to hold and heal
all that needs holding
why do you work so hard
my cousin asks
to remember my grandmother
so my children remember me
Babylonian Village, 2.5 Millennium
Traditionally, Iraqi-Jewish girls were betrothed between the ages
of 9-11, married ages 12-13. What clay tablets cannot say,
not even in Akkadian cuneiform script preserved by Babylonian
heat: the sound of footsteps, a girl running through a date grove,
maybe she climbed a date tree and picked dates before they were
ripe and ready, to feel what it’s like to be eaten before her time.
It was no different for Muslim or Christian girls.
Al-Uzair - The Village of Ezra the Scribe, Farhud: June 1 - 1941
Date groves surrounded the shrine with the turquoise blue dome
and the golden hamsa. My great-grandfather Yousif gathered his
family onto a boat on the Tigris River to escape, but Wenu Su’ad?
Where is Su’ad? A girl is left behind. My great-grandfather was
the head of this compound of a hundred rooms, of scholars
studying the Babylonian Talmud. How many doors were
smashed? Su’ad was found and saved on the boat. How many
chairs, tables and pots were broken? It takes 15-20 years for a
Medjool date tree to grow. A 100 year old Medjool date tree can
grow over 100 feet. How many dates fall uncounted?
Baghdad, Farhud: June 1 - 1941
Date palms lined the Tigris River running through Baghdad. They
wait for someone to protect them from the defeated Iraqi soldiers
who crossed the Tigris River, from their neighbors, from
policemen in civilian clothes. Wielding guns, knives, axes. Axes
are for cutting trees, but date trees should not be cut. Doors, girls’
virginity, babies, men with wristwatches were cut down, dragged
off buses, dragged from their homes, thrown into the river, thrown into the
secret of how many live in a mass grave.
Jerusalem, May 2021
There are 179 official names of victims of the Farhud on the list
in Zvi Yehuda’s academic paper, but I meet another name—the
father of Shoshana. She was born in Baghdad and runs the dry
cleaner on Palmach Street. She looks much younger than her age
with her raven black dyed hair and girlish I-know-a-secret eyes,
but she is old enough to remember her father leaving their festive
Shavuot meal to check what the din was all about. (Didn’t he
know my grandmother? She always said, stay at home.) Home is
safest, until it’s not. He was shot dead. How do you measure
safety in feet? How many more names are not on the list?
Or Yehuda, Mordechai Ben-Porat Street, June 2021
How old are the dates on the ground by my feet outside the
Babylonian Jewish Heritage Centre? Palms line the street like
sentinels of memory. They are almost a hundred feet. They are
the Barhee variety, the softest and most fragile, yellow, unready
for this cutting and loading onto the municipality truck. You can’t
throw it all away. I retrieve a laden branch knowing they will dry
old, shriveled, a clay reminder—that once upon a time there were
Jews in a land of cuneiform tablets of wheat fields and date
groves. Once a girl clung to a tree.
Teaspoons stir secrets, how one who crushes cardamom
resurrects stories not found in the annals of man. Read
this text of piney perfume brewed by my grandmother,
menthol scented hands preserving a bouquet of Baghdad,
wisdom steamed and startled from a silver tea pot.
How to dance in the sickled husk of a crescent moon.
So much evaporates: rosewater, rivers, bricks, prayers. The moon
asks where is it safe? Black tea whispers to the cardamom,
once there was a fragrant future, how bitter over hot in a pot
fate becomes. Never boil the water too angry. You need to learn to read
the mob. Tortured tea is the reason to pack one suitcase and leave Baghdad.
Where is home? I want to ask my grandmother.
The truth, the best homes are people, like my grandmother,
but she’s now on a mountain, white limestone under a blood moon
where there’s no birth date, place, or recipe—how to brew Baghdad
kahwa with green, sticky, seeds of cardamom,
how to pestle and mortar memory into shell shreds, read
headstones from home numbers, find the displaced lid for this pot.
It’s all about the pot
wide as the Tigris River, the hips of my grandmother
bearing eight children, bearing not being taught to read.
She lived by the syntax of the moon,
punctuated by teatime laced with honeyed lemon, mint, and cardamom
binding families into books without a shelf in Baghdad.
They carried what they could, maqam music, date songs of Baghdad,
but how do you fit the entire chalqi ensemble, the coffee shop in a pot?
It’s the small things we carry, broken seeds, hearts, cocoons of cardamom
which grow new roots in fresh cups of tea because my grandmother
knew a woman’s belly holds the births and blessings of the moon
singing the santur, joza, daff and dumbak rhythms that can’t be read.
Displaced, al-Yahud can be read
only in the stars, swept from the Mesopotamian bitumen of Baghdad.
When a home is emptied is it to leave more light for the moon
or is it to bequeath to some lone spoon the worn metal memory pot?
No good can happen to those who don’t think good, my grandmother
said, grinding exile with extra fine black cardamom.
What is left but to cook ancient Babylonian moons in a pot,
feed my children baklawa, read in phyllo folds about Baghdad
my grandmother’s teaspoon of strength, a lifetime of cardamom.
Counting Stones at the Bottom of the Tigris River
Stone 1
The day hope died a burden was lifted. Al
-Yahud’s ropes were untied. A sack of
golden bangles, clay tablets and unleavened
Babylonian bread, khubz fatir fell to the
bottom of the river— flat bread carries no joy.
This is why my grandparents are silent. Their
history dumped in the river. This is why I dive in,
seeking what’s at the bottom of the riverbed, find
the turban of the chief rabbi, Chacham
Bashi Moshe, unravelling in my DNA;
gravel and clay remnants I add to my sack.
Find how I have become an archaeologist
of family ghosts.
Stone 2
Find: Barley sheaves, wheat, Farhud
bodies, bodies who tried to smuggle themselves
out, donkeys, field fruit fleshed out in letters we
cannot read anymore, pressed into clay,
dried up long ago in Babylonian heat. What
became of donkeys’ bones? Of discarded
date seeds? Know this, to count the bones
does not bring the donkey back to life.
Stone 3
I lose my thread of fact. It dips its head in
my coffee, lets me drink it, forgetting
how empty the cup always is in the end.
How I want more—and yet, to have more
is to grow fat on antique longing; what is
not hope or faith in my children. I don’t
know when the Tigris River swallowed me,
or how its tides divide in me what cannot
be archived.
Stone 4
My acupuncturist tells me there is a ghost
point—sticks a needle in my stomach—and
lets the wind blow through. The main thing
is not to get stuck. The main thing is to
stick a needle in the bottom of your sole—
the bubbling wellspring. The main thing is
to move.
Stone 5
But, the older I get the more ghosts I meet. I
distance myself, walk a bit faster, to
dissociate the ghost of grief, but it’s closer
than I’d like. A leaf’s breath away. A
pecked orange. A date dislodged by a
parakeet. Sometimes I think there is a
graveyard in my stomach—where the ghosts
visit, place a stone, and leave.
There once was a way
to cross the river,
an old Jewish bridge
from the Tigris to the Euphrates
flowing ancient date honey.
What remains in the heart
of al-Yahudi?
The sound of a river,
the sound of a prayer
that splits the sea,
the simmering of qaymer
thick and creamy
in an earthenware pot
remembered by a river.
The Muezzin wakes me,
luminous tongue of my forebears
nourished with refugee camp
margarine and semolina
soaked in a river.
The scent of Baghdad lingers,
pastries infused with rosewater,
vegetables stuffed with grief,
grandchildren must eat.
My grandmother
knew of knives
that slashed dreams
bleeding al-Yahudi
into the river.
I light a sea of candles
for my grandmother,
for Ezra the Scribe,
for al-Yahudi to have a boat
between the river and the sea.
I keep searching the night sky
for full circles,
but my life hangs
by an amulet
and all my rivers
and all my seas begin
and end with al-Yahudi.
[al-Yahudi - The Jew]
Acknowledgements
“Garlic Clove” - The Roadrunner Review
“Why is this Night Different?” - Lilith Magazine
“The Color Jew” - Voices Israel
“Once Upon a Time in Baghdad” - Poetica Review
“Counting Stones at the Bottom of the Tigris River” - Invisible City
This is Why We Don't Look Back
Copyright © 2022 Sarah Sassoon
Cover art by C. R. Resetarits
Cover and interior design by Diana Baltag
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or republished without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Harbor Review
Joplin, MO 64870
harborreviewmagazine@gmail.com
www.harbor-review.com
Sarah Sassoon
Sarah Sassoon is an Australian born writer and poet of Iraqi-Jewish descent. Her work has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Ruminate, Lilith, The Ilanot Review, Consequence Forum and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Andrea Moriah Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award. Her micro-chapbook This is Why We Don’t Look Back was recently awarded first place in Harbor Review’s Jewish Women's poetry prize. Sarah is also the author of the children’s picture book Shoham’s Bangle (Kar-Ben Publishing).
www.sarahsassoon.com