only an american by Mandy Shunnarah

only an american
Mandy Shunnarah

Just like the Brits to rename our country
with a P: a letter we don’t have, a sound
our tongues wrestle to say. It’s not Palestine
like old buddy, old pal, old friend, but Falastin.
They’d know Arabic is phonetic if they could
read, but that’s an occupier for you—unwelcome
guest. We have names impossible to mispronounce
& yet they expect the world to say it their way.

In their new country, my grandparents
give their children “good American names”
impossible to mispronounce by the native-born
of this land. They called their first child, a daughter,
Patricia—with a P. Because who would believe
an umma & baba from Falastin would name their
child with a letter their mouths refused to speak,
damned to a lifetime calling her Badrisha.

Only an American would do that.

MARGINALIA

1.
My father named me so because he said my eyes looked like stars. He said he was supposed to give me a boy’s name because I was supposed to be a boy, that the name was ready to be given, that I was not what they expected.

2.
I often think about the names we give in hope and the names we give in fear. How some are meant to open doors, or to survive the sharp edges of someone else’s pronunciation.

3.
Have you ever had your survival depend on fitting inside the limits of someone else’s mouth?

4.
I know what it’s like to come from a language that holds more truth than English knows how to bear. A language built for poetry and protest, spoken in kitchens and in grief, never needing permission to mean what it means.

5.
Sometimes the cruelest violence is the one we commit against ourselves, just to be let in.

6.
Only someone raised on the might of the empire would believe that names can be neutral. You are kidding yourself if you think that language doesn’t have blood in it.