if they come for Us

Fatimah Asghar’s poems in If They Come For Us are simultaneously her own stories and the shared experience of so many with no home. Fatimah repeatedly touches on not having a place of her own, not knowing her history but knowing that the American life she lives is a shitty replacement to the home she was born to. She talks about the suffering her people endured, how History has reduced them to “nothing”. Although there are many differences her stories remind me of my own. How History reduces us to what they think of us, nothing. It takes a lot of work to remember// we are nothing// What has history given us but a //fickle home? A legacy// of bloodied men .. (7) It was 2000 and we knew nothing of history / just the shit we read about in class of gods not ours (35)

I really liked the piece Kal and how the word means both yesterday and tomorrow. How the longing of days past is eerily similar to the hope for tomorrow. How we wish we could go back in time to happier times and pray that our next days can somehow live up to what we deem as the happiest moments of our lives. To me it was a reminder (and wake up call) that nothing is real but the present and to utilize that time thinking of kal is to waste what we are given. In Kal, Asghar speaks repeatedly about yesterdays but not much of tomorrow. To me, it symbolizes her longing for all that she has lost and can never get back.

I appreciate the repetition in poem titles. Partition appears 5 times. Each time shedding light on the boundaries in her life. The spaces that can not be crossed, the voids that can not be filled. & we stay/ separate, not allowed to cross/ I’m ten/ & haven’t been hugged in a long/ time/ Allah made a barrier between me & my mom/ Ullu makes a barrier between me and my aunt (20).

I liked White Lie too. A simple phrase that has a lighthearted meaning but in reality the lies of white people are anything but light. They wreak havoc and cause detriment to people of color everywhere.

The author calling herself half boy is interesting. It speaks to the feelings of having contradicting identities. This isn’t discussed much, but I think a lot of people experience the feeling of being at war with yourself. How does anyone win, if not first within?