Price of Emigration

Tariq Latif

 

I am cut in three                                                            

for Harjinder Sangha

 

my flesh scattered 

to opposite parts of the world.

 

The British Raj 

divided my country  

with the stroke of a pen

and we had to move.

 

I reasoned with my sons,

‘the soil will be the same,

the seasons will not change,

our land is one continuous plain.’

 

But they raged like crazed tigers.

 

And they uprooted with such anger 

and bitterness, I knew

something would give – but this

oh Akal Purakh, not this…

 

Param, Samir and Manan came to me,

after just one season following the terrible move, 

with their passports and visas.

Australia.      England.      Canada.

 

I wanted to tear my chemise,

throw off my turban and cut my hair,

but I held myself, though in my heart I cried.

 

‘Don’t be deceived by the five thieves,’

I said. ‘Wherever you find yourselves,

be sure to build a Gurdwara.’

 

Then I gouged my sword 

into the Punjabi soil 

and made a thick cut.

‘A trunk,’ I said and I marked 

three branches 

for my three boys.

 

‘Remember your roots,

keep your faith and go in peace.’

I hugged them one by one

and then they were gone,

like jet smoke in the sky.     

 

And the tiger in me lay down to die.

Mimic

 

Re-locating from Lahore to Manchester

at the age of eight, I learnt to speak

English by approximations, mimicking 

the sounds of words as they were spoken.

 

Compared to Urdu, the English alphabet lacked

subtle kinks and emotive curves – no minarets,

deep pans or snake-eyed shapes to letters.

 

I had to soften my guttural tongue,

reverse my writing from right to left,

re-name the world with strange new words

and, that slow erosion of my Punjabi self,

alter my auditory and emotional 

responses to a new language.

 

I had to learn that some words 

like except and accept sounded the same

but had different meanings. I before e 

except after c confounded me.

Before I left primary school 

I was taught the word pre-ju-dice,    

the meaning of which troubles me to this day.

 

Sometimes I am asked:

‘Does being bilingual pose problems

in your writing?’

‘No,’ I reply. ‘It makes it richer.’ However,

I should tell you that often poems 

do not begin with words

but images or emotions,

and all art is a form of translation –

an approximation of music and vision

heard, seen and felt beyond ourselves.

And that is another act of mimicry. 

 

Price of emigration

 

In this film a French actor plays a Scotsman

who is banished from his clan.

Our fathers left their respective homelands

to improve the prospects of our lives.

 

Having graduated we play-act

being British, fussing over mortgages,

joking about pensions and grudging the fact

that in our jobs discrimination is a given.

 

Ramjet’s father once confessed he never

intended for his children to stay.

To his frustration they scattered,

pursuing careers all over the UK.

 

And in the last of his days, they all took flights

to Panjim to share with him in his last hours 

the unknown honeycombs of his life. 

Those intense moments silted down to silence.      

 

A day later, raging flames from the pyre

burned in their minds a blaze of images – 

his nervous laughter, his solemn face,

his leaving them to go back home to India. 

 

They stayed awhile, sniffing the hot

salty air of his birthplace, eating 

methi aloo with red chillies and roti,

cooked to perfection from recipes 

 

passed down by word of mouth across

generations. They conversed with uncles, 

aunts and cousins who knew the family’s roots 

going back over two hundred years. Later still, 

 

Ramjet and his siblings departed in different jets.

Watched by his cousins, those planes 

left white trails that pointed to different skies.

White roots that vanished before their eyes.

Cellular communication

 

I heard the clank and creak of wooden wheels

turning through dry ruts on a dirt track;

my cousin’s earthy voice over the peals 

of brass bells; a whip slapping a bull’s back;

and my aunt’s chatter, bright as a sparrow’s

among her children, harvesting the black

rice. I felt a warmth drift in my marrow

as we conversed, and then I felt a lack

 

in our shared lives, lived continents apart.

An exile’s inward lament for family, friends

and home filled me with longing. My heart 

ached, but I talked on as one who pretends

that all is well and will always be well,

if we never speak of this private hell.    

Hunger

 

There is a particular soft bone

in the shoulder of a lamb that is edible.

My uncle gave it to my mum, 

after he had licked it clean

of all the meat and spice. My mother,

who had slaved to cook that meal,

ate it with bitterness. She gave me

some lamb fat, which was my share.

That was in Lahore. I think I was six.

Skinny, undernourished and sick.

 

I remember months later at my aunt’s house,

although I was full, my hungry eyes

made me delirious

 looking at all the plates

heaped with tandoori chicken,

steaming saag gosht with spiced pilau rice,

limitless naan bread and huge silver dishes

full of sweet yellow rice with almonds and raisins.

That wedding feast was paradise. 

 

                          *

 

‘Poverty,’ says Ashley, as she scoffs 

smoked salmon with some soft cheese, ‘is relative.’ 

She purses her lips to a glass of Chardonnay and declares:

‘Poverty and poetry are synonymous.’     

 

I hear some seagulls outside,

scrapping over scraps of bread.

Their cries sound like knives

being sharpened against stone.

I begin to tell Ashley 

about a particular soft bone…

Incidental 

 

‘Call an ambulance, the Paki’s dead.’

That Paki happened to be my dad.

His heart had packed in and he had crashed

his car halfway down the circular exit

of the Tesco car park. In that same hour,

 

I had hooked a trout in a remote loch,

miles away from the madness. The fish

had shivered in the silvery light 

as the sun, a newly minted coin, hung low.

And in that same insane hour when 

 

they had prised him out of the car, 

my brothers, waiting for him at home, 

were getting hungry for fresh baguettes 

and my sisters, one in Chicago, the other in Beijing,  

were having a rant about boyfriends on Twitter.    

 

Three days later, surrounded by his old friends,

we were shovelling earth in his grave. 

Two men passing us commented:

‘Never seen so many Pakis in a cemetery.’ 

‘That’s just where they belong.’

Black snow

 

I know your silence and stony glare spells

hate for my honey-coloured skin. My face

might then show fear because your hatred smells

of petrol, ropes, charred wood. You know my race

and know we’re all the same. Like all the other

non-white inferiors. Sticks and stones will break

my bones, but all you’ll have is another

corpse. You will never burn or hang or stake

my soul – it is strong even while you stand

tall behind hoods. In a crowd. Proud coward.

You claim supremacy but understand

this: your genetically pure blood has soured

with your venomous lies. We have one life.

You could waste it on hate, or drop the knife.

Ices

 

Your wintered-out path is pocked

with puddles of sick water.

It snakes and turns on itself.

 

Each iced surface is a page

smeared with clumsy curves, random

braille or binary languages

 

shaped by the movement of beasts,

boots or migratory birds –

clues in some strange code of how

 

you were brainwashed and deceived.

Remember when you were five

you kept slipping on the hard 

 

frozen pond? I kept hoping

you would work out the method

to balance your weight that would

 

keep you upright. When you fell

the fourth time I gathered you

in my strong arms, held you tight  

 

whispered it’s all right. I won’t 

let you go. Somehow over 

the years you fell in cyber

 

space, vanished in some webcam

dream. Migratory birds will

find their way back home but not

 

you. There are no return flights

from the country you entered.

No maps. No telephones. Nothing.

 

Callous brutality

will not get you to heaven.

Your jihadist cries are lies.

 

I am sick with shame. Horror

and shame. I pray to Allah

to receive those you murdered

 

in paradise, to comfort

their distressed families. And 

for Christ’s blood to absolve us. 

Refugees

 

When the fisherman casts his line

out to sea, a splinter of light

loops along the brief curve

 

and the slack line becomes 

an umbilical cord that connects him 

to the vast mass of the sea’s dark, 

 

to the care-free movement of shoals

and some primeval instinct for survival.

His son, along the beach, lifts a kite

 

into the blue. The boy gauges

the weight of the wind with his fingers.

He is envious of migratory birds, 

 

their freedom of flight 

and how they cross borders

without visas, papers or fuss.

 

His kite is now a white dot

floating alongside the evening star.

He releases the string and watches

 

the kite vanishing in the twilight,

and imagines a girl finding it 

caught in a tree, hanging limp

 

like an idea of hope, freedom, peace,

a life without explosions, gunfire,

screaming and dying. He longs

 

for an ordinary childhood.

His father winds in a silvery fish

that twists and splashes in shiny arcs.

 

Slowly the sky is flayed by the quiet

blades of starlight. The man whispers grace

over the savoury scents of smoked fish.

 

As they eat the lean portions of meat

he points out the constellation of stars

that mark the edge of the galaxy.

 

Beyond that, he says, there are many

many galaxies and many, many gods,

each seeking and asking and asking…