Meron Berhanu

Daughterhood and Motherland

The word archive 

I search for 1973. Nothing is saved from this year. Even though my mother remembers the newspapers. Perhaps that is why she came to England with an old backpack. No space for photographs. 

I search for 1973, woman shot in front of her children. Addis Ababa. There are questions the internet cannot fathom, let alone answer. Like: what was she wearing? 

I search for 1973, husband kills wife in front of their daughters. Addis Ababa. 1973. 1973. 1973. 

I search for synonyms of tragedy. For photographs that do not exist, were never taken or never kept safe. I search for concrete history, for someone else to say yes, this happened. This mattered. I search for someone to believe me.

I search for things the internet cannot fathom. Like: when was her birthday? My mother does not remember. The strength of one memory can wipe others out completely.

I search for a memory that is not mine. I search for 1973. For a year to exist again, to happen in front of me. That I could be a part of it and offer my hand – to hold her – to keep her safe. 

Alien

Green backpack, loaded with her life.

A tiny woman standing underneath a building –

So colossal in its whiteness

it must have a heartbeat.

The gravity of the red white and

blue weigh down her footsteps, pulls

her into its orbit. Her motherland is not

a place anymore. It is something she carries –

a wound she tends to, every night.

But right now, she is here. 

In this country, in this embassy –

in front of a man behind a screen and 

says I’m ready to live. In which she means –

I want to prove that I can. 

01/01

a blank slate – like the day after an apocalypse 

you will open your eyes to a dead new world 

and you too must be created again.

you will give your birthday a chance 

to live under a sky that does not shudder

or men at night who take your brothers.

you will be given the new year –

even though you know, this entails so much more:

your master’s degree, your first time, your last 

kiss goodbye. 

a small cost – not for freedom 

but for possibility 

to have two birthdays and only 

celebrate one. 

because what is a passport anyway?

if not proof that I’m passing by –

I’m real –  and I’m passing by. 

Endnote:

Prior to the 2000s, Ethiopian passports only contained the month and year of the citizens birthday. With the influx of Ethiopian refugees in the 90s, British procedure resulted in many citizens’ date of birth on their passport being changed to 1st January. 

The Innocence Project 

boy in a newspaper. 

ironing his shirt in the bliss of being

unaware of what would come. 

girl stealing mangos

because fruit tastes sweeter

when it is stolen. 

girl sees newspaper

she touches his static face

bending over his shirt

boy lives under her bed. 

boy has liver spots of blood 

he watches her sleep

girl sees him everywhere

she stops stealing mangos

girl asks if he is really dead.

he turns his head. 

she asks if she can wash him

in the fountains of Hyde Park.

Cemetery 

Here is the beginning and the end.

(I don’t know where I begin and you end) 

Between a blade of grass and the root

Of the root. Where does the soil begin?

And you end? 

You’re end – you are an end.

A hollow space in the ground that 

Is not human nor corpse.

But the space between words on your gravestone

‘Mother, daughter’