from House to House | بيت لبيت

Shamma Al Bastaki

House to House

a big rock of
salt was crushed into
tiny crystals that’s what
we used to salt

our food these rocks
were sold in the
old souq but of
course they got them

from the sea we
ate fish a lot
of fried fish loomy
ruwaid rice spiced for

lunch breakfast was eggs
there wasn’t that much
there weren’t many options
cheese ma cheese no

one chose really no
one had really cheese
would spoil quick just
a little we had

جبن ما جبن
 محد كان ياكل

شوي

قليل



my mother Maria and
my aunt used to
teach Quran in the
house they were the

teachers of the freej
the mothers of the
tongues they used to
have 30 to 40

students at a time
sometimes more sometimes less
mashallah our house was
always filled with heads

every day they would
come every day they
all still remember her
Abdulshakoor was her student

and when he would
see me anywhere still
even today he always
points at me like

this and says “the
mother of this one
taught me everything”
“أم هذا علمتني كل شيء”

they were all young
kids they started when
they were young kids
when they were young


 
صغار من صغرهم
سبع سنين ايون عند أمي
seven years old they
came to my mother

and when they finished
the Quran a bit
older now they celebrated
wore flower garlands around

their heads and the
girls wore lots of
gold boys and girls
we all learned together

celebrated together we walked
from house to house
a group in a



line the first person
would read the rest
would repeat house to
house house to house



in Eid we would
go to the tujjar’s
house byoot el tujjar
mathalan bait Mohammad Abbas

we would have breakfast
there everyone gathered there
all everyone Marars Bastakis
some would come from

Deira too and do
you know what their
breakfast was? rice and
meat—rice and meat?—
yes rice and meat

twenty big plates or
so and harees too
—then what was their
lunch?—also the same



يوم العيد لازم جيه
But Eid day has
to be like this
and so we went

from house to house
and house to house
من بيت لبيت من
بيت لبيت من بيت




from house to house
they go like this
and not one person
two persons

 مب نفر
نفرين



لا

سبعين أو ثمانين



no seventy or eighty
persons all like the
crowd of a football
match مثل مباراة

they gave us kids
eediya of course eediya
made us happy الصغارية
عطوهم آنة آنتين ثلاث



 آنات
one ana two ana
three anas when I
grew a little bigger

they gave me a
rubiah sometimes and I
went and exchanged it
for anas sixteen anas

so I could feel
like I had more
coins in my hands
the night of Eid



we would pray isha
then take the abra
to deira where the
dukkan was and we

opened the dukkan from
the evening until dawn
نسير نفتح الدكان لين قبل الفجر



there were no lamps
la kahraba ma kahraba
we had this other
thing—like a fanoos?

—no— fanar?—no—like
gas—no—like candles—
no wait wait let
me find a picture

on my phone ding
ding dong ding twing
hush rush swiff foo
this see this we

would connect this to
this and then they
lit a flame inside
fire inside this so

this would transform
into something like a
glob bulb gloob globe





Clay II







Barjeel

big very big I
thought our house was
the rooms were big
the hoash the yard

but now everything became
small
my wedding was
in that house when
I took my kids

I told them my
wedding was here they
were surprised ya3ni they were
like how ya3ni how

 

كيف يعني كيف يعني
صغر المكان
 
 
even the rooms are
smaller
now we used
to see them as big
maybe now because I
 
see so many buildings
I am used to
so many big things 
 
even the bathroom became
small
how did we
shower in that bathroom!

 

—what did your bathroom
look like where did
you get water how
did you shower did—

some bathrooms had showers
maybe 1 maybe 2
but regular ones had
no showers only places

for wuduu the WC

                                                                                 قضاء الحاجة كان برع                                                                                                      

was behind the house
in the حوي  but
far a bit we
had a WC down

and up on the
roof and the bi’ir
was on that side
one was down one

 

was like this I
remember [Shahrazad’s sister: but
no but I remember
too] [Shahrazad: el baadgeer]
 
[Shahrazad’s sister: el baarjeel
[Shahrazad: el el baarjeel
baadgeer ya3ni baarjeel ysamoona
the name comes from
 
baad which means wind
and geer which means
what catches the wind
the holes the openings

 

you know there were
four openings from every
side in summer they
would open them in

winter they would close
them—with what did
they close them—they
closed them with wood

like this a triangle
wood to close it
in winter in summer
they take the wood out

for the wind to
come to them [no

don’t drink that with soya milk please but it’s ok you can keep it I’ll have this one do you want no I want an empty glass for me please make it with soya milk for me do you want orange juice Shamma لا I’m fine do you have watermelon juice yeah ok I’ll have some watermelon juice thank you what else do you want to know]

yes! yes yes yes
this was before petrol
the
small
days

Listen to a collage of sounds from interviews conducted by Shamma Al Bastaki:

The poems presented here are excerpts from my multilingual year-long senior capstone project in poetry, entitled House to House | بيت لبيت; a collection of ethnographic poetry in which I present undocumented oral narratives of the diverse peoples of the Dubai Creek, including the communities of Al Bastakiya, Al Shindagha, and Deira. This work explores the blurred boundaries between memory and history, and how memory, in its fragmentation, reproduction, retelling, and un-telling, eventually becomes its own kind of history. Furthermore, it is a project about language: language in translation, language as bearer of meaning and medium for story telling, language as a catalyzer of communion and communication, language as sound and a series of phonetics, and language as physical material, existent for its own sake.

These poems were birthed from interview transcripts that I conducted with elderly members of different Creek communities, and while most of them were conducted in Arabic and some UAE minority languages, such as Ajami, I have translated most of the material into English, keeping some in the original languages, either in the actual script or transliterated where I felt the sounds and oratory quality of the words outweighed their meanings. In the process of making these works, I have been thinking about what is at stake in my choice to write predominantly in English, with a few exceptions where I feel the language needs to stay in its original iteration. Does this deviation from the original spoken languages lie in the choice of writing in English, or does it reside more in the style I am adopting instead? I would say both, with perhaps more emphasis on the latter. Even if my poems had retained the original Arabic or Ajami, Hindi, etc., in which they were spoken, there would still be a considerable difference in style, for the Arabic of the interviews was not classical, but highly colloquial and of the Emirati dialect (and its broken variations). The colloquial essence is not a loan of the English language; it is not a quality I found in English that I sought to emulate in writing these poems: rather, colloquialisms are embedded in the Emirati conversational dialect, which I tried to mimic in my semi-translations. Moreover, the form I have adopted, with its severe enjambments, denaturalizes the reading experience and creates a kind of syntactical fuzziness that perhaps mimics our global synthesis of language today.

Shamma Al Bastaki graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi with a double major in literature & creative writing and social research & public policy, and has been a student and mentee of poet and critic Jill Magi. Shamma regularly performs her work at poetry readings and events, including Rooftop Rhythms, Backyard Poetry, Blank Space, Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C., and the NYUAD Art Center’s Hekayah, for which she has served as co-curator in 2017 and 2018. Her poetry was published in several volumes of Airport Road, and she has been a feature writer for Electra Street, an NYU Journal of Humanities. She is a founding member of “Untitled Chapters,” a group of Emirati writers with the aim to create a platform for lovers of the written word to share their passion, grow as writers, and build a network that seeks to empower the voice of the Emirati woman locally and globally. Moreover, Shamma is a student ambassador for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and as of 2018 is a recipient of the NYU President’s Service Award for her contributions to culture and shaping arts discourse in the UAE.