Scent of Qahwa

 

Because desperate men fight always to control something—

this time it is ma’a, the water as it disappears—

this girl will fight through leech-filled swamps,

forge the vast White Nile,

watch sisters go down in crocodile jaws.

 

She will survive on rainwater,

green flesh of shea nut,

salty porridge of tree leaves,

while skin swells with ticks and

shreds in Kono thickets.

 

This girl will reach the refugee camp on petrified feet,

find neither food, nor water.

 

She will stay, fight a kind of death

behind the camp’s truck barriers,

wrestled down, voice smothered in tall grasses

by three militiamen.

 

She will not sleep,

must listen, listen for sounds of

helicopters, MiG’s, and approaching janjaweed.

 

Beneath a Sahara-stained tent,

this lost girl will fight to remember

the scent of qahwa,

the vision of a mother’s desert-dry hands,

dusted in grindings of clove and fried coffee beans,

offering her family their daily drink

in tiny clay cups.

 

              ----------Tara Masih

 

Tara L. Masih has published fiction, poetry, and essays in numerous anthologies and literary magazines and her essays have been read on NPR. Two illustrated chapbooks featuring her flash fiction have been published by The Feral Press (Oyster Bay, NY: 2006).

 

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