On the Uber ride home, I remember
to scrape Arab from the tip of my tongue
just in time when the driver asks about the origins
of my name. Tunisian, I say. North Africa.
He nods, the whole continent floating black
and indistinguishable in his fenced imagination.
I have always depended on the ignorance
of strangers. More so tonight when the headlines
I saw last week are still blinking red and blue
in a corner of my brain: Victims reportedly were wearing
the Palestinian keffiyeh and speaking in Arabic
when they were attacked. I never read the full article.
If there’s more to the story, it only reassures
the hunters, not the prey. Before coming to this country,
I read about the cab driver killed for having
a Muslim name, and I still came armed
with a set of disappearing acts—skin light
enough to pass. Unplaceable accent. My name
withheld whenever I sniff a bait. Tomorrow,
this fear, too, will be filed under Discreet lest
someone rattles the trap that keeps me here or asks
about the distant shape of my American dream.
The heart forgets, and in forgetting, it stays in place.
Denied Entry to Singapore
We’re sorry to inform you that your visa application
was rejected. Consider this a bureaucratic take
-down-a-notch. Don’t kid yourself about the cost
of stamps. Six years in America and two
graduate degrees don’t make you less third
world, less needy, less likely to crawl like a rat
through clandestine tunnels. Just because we need to pick
your brother’s brain doesn’t mean we should heed the call
of his blood, that your jungle-green veins
can branch out long enough to climb over
border walls. Feel free to plant a petition inside
the dimples on your niece’s baby cheeks, but all
pictures will be plucked out like foreign weeds
or like the petals of a forget-me-not darling, please.
Texas Winters
Everything is bigger in Texas, even the borders
of my loneliness. This night, too, my candlestick
fingers are as luminous as the full moon glazing
the handrail’s cold metal. Only this time, I don’t
wonder about the shape of sadness splayed
on the freshly mowed lawn. I once rated
my suicidal thoughts one on a scale from never to
all the fucking time, and the nurse
practitioner showered my palms with brochures.
We laughed when I told you about it later.
How I only meant it in a conceptual way. Only it wasn’t
funny at all, my cries for help always dipped
in honey and wrapped in sour jokes. Back then, I mistook
every free drink for an invitation to string
the hours of the night with a pink thread. Every bar
counter a gateway to intimacy. Where do
the displaced go to find permanence? Would you have
believed me if I told you I didn’t choose
to want this place? That some silences are stretched
too paper-thin to make the air squirm. It took
me years to topple the shrine I built for blue eyes. The homes
I tethered to tourist hearts. Now I know
the shades of brown that get the blood going. The exact
hour of the night when it stops.
Yosra Bouslama is a PhD candidate in literature at the University of North Texas. Born and raised in Tunisia, she received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue graduate studies in The United States in 2017. Her research interests include African Diaspora Studies and Postcolonial Studies.
the Decolonial Passage 