Two Poems from Maram Al-Masri

The Abduction (White Pine Press) refers to an autobiographical event in Maram Al-Masri’s life. When, as a young Arab woman living in France, she decides to separate from her husband with whom she has a child, the father kidnaps the baby and returns to Syria. Al-Masri won’t see her son for thirteen years. This is the story of a woman denied the basic right to raise her child. These are haunting, spellbinding poems of love, despair, and hope, a delicate, profound and powerful book on intimacy, a mother’s rights, war, exile, and freedom. Maram Al-Masri embodies the voice of all parents, who one day, for whatever the reason, have been forcibly separated from their loved ones. She writes about the status of women, seeking to reconcile her role as a mother with her writing work. The terrible war that has devastated her native country since 2011 has painfully affected her. 

Maram Al-Masri

Two poems by Maram Al-Masri

I don’t want to grow old

I don’t want to grow old
so my child recognizes me
the day he comes back
to see me

I don’t want to die
like my mother
because I have a child
though not in my arms
but one day
for certain
he will need me

The world is hard, my son

The world is hard, my son
hard as a machine gun magazine
hard as the walls of a detention center
hard as the look of contempt
I didn’t warn you to wait before coming to join me
I didn’t warn you, little plants
get easily trampled
I didn’t warn you, here you must be strong
here they like diplomas
they like bank accounts
I warn you, the drowned
cannot save
the drowning

Immigrant
you will always be
in the crosshairs of suspicion
I didn’t warn you, immigrants arrive fragile
as infants