My Mother's Hips by West Duwaji

7/9/2010

When my little head reached the bottom of my mother’s hips, the willow tree was still singing in

the backyard of my grandmother’s house in Damascus. The grape vines still wrapped around the wires woven through a tunnel that we would run through, needing to be held over my father’s shoulder just to reach a ripe one. The swimming pool where I would fall in love with bodies of water still filled up every summer we visited. The swing still creaked everytime my legs pushed towards the sun. The cards still played under the mosaic baby blue dome my grandfather designed. He was the architect that helped build the home where all my favorite childhood memories lie.

3/25/2013

It has been three years since I've stepped foot in Damascus and I can now touch my mother’s

shoulders if I am on my tip toes. Home has been a difficult thing to define. I was born in a small

city in New Jersey, spent most of my childhood in Syria and now I live in Dubai. I don’t know

where my heart belongs. Will I ever find out? Or will I always be searching for an answer?

9/13/2018

Now 7 years since the civil war started, my head reaches farther than my mothers heart and I can feel it yearning for the summers we shared. Broken, because she will never be able to touch not even a fragment of the house her father created, that now has become nothing but rubble. The house came crashing down, with any hopes of us returning. Our memories taken by the rebels in the form of picture frames and family heirlooms that my mother was waiting to hand down. She is still craving the calmness the smell of wardata al Yasmeen and her mother’s kibbeh labanieh on a cold summer night would bring her. Missing her little children running around the willow tree we used to play house, getting lost in its long branches. She will never get that back. And neither will I. And neither will my beloved sister. We are stuck mourning the place that brought harmony into our lives, the places where all happiness was stored and it will forever be there, waiting for us to come back.

6/30/2024

I turn on the news today, in my studio apartment, 5,513 miles from my grandmother's house in

Damascus. The AC was blaring in the 90 degree weather Boston has once a year. But the TV

blared louder. I hear “AL JAZEERA BREAKING NEWS: ISRAELI STRIKE HITS SYRIA’S

LATAKIA, STATE MEDIA REPORTS.” I stare at the screen frozen and even though Latakia is a  neighboring city, a couple hours away from my family, I know I need to check on them. Because it is never only one news story. I text my mother asking her if my family is okay and I'm stuck in a never ending cycle that I can't escape from. I wait with shaking hands, hopelessly for the news that we know we never want to hear. Another mosque blown to nothingness. Another person missing. Another person found, but dead. I left Syria many moons ago and I left a part of me there. Everytime I hear my country will never recover from the wars it's engulfed in, that part breaks a little and soon there will be nothing left of it.

9/21/2024

It gets cold here in a way it doesn’t back home, and 3 years later I’m still not used to it. I am not

used to a lot of things. The buildings look different, the food tastes bland, the leaves are changing color and I started dating a white girl who doesn't understand my language. I can feel her trying but I feel like I'm split in half. She once asked me “What is it you say when you are about to leave?” and I went “What? Yalla? You don’t know what that means?” and she looked at me, with a blank face and went “Of course not, I’m uncultured”. I laughed and kissed her to change the subject. I didn’t know how to tell her that this 5 letter word could mean a million things. I didn't  know how to tell her that I wish I didn’t have to explain it to her.

11/2/2024

I wake up every morning and I play Fairuz while I make myself the same breakfast my mother

used to make for me, a plate with 2 boiled eggs, a dollop of labneh, half a cucumber cut into

slices and warm pita to dip. And I’m transported back to my childhood, sitting with my

grandfather on the red tareebeza couch while he was drinking his white coffee telling me stories about all the mosques he designed and how he helped reconstruct Syria, and I remember being so enthralled with his life and wishing I could savor this moment forever. “Don’t forget that Syria will always be in our hearts, Habibti, no matter what”, he told me. And 10 years later I wish I could tell him he was right.