My Arabic wouldn’t be broken, it would be whole.

If the Lebanese Civil War did not force my family to flee

Maha Hashwi

If the bombs did not fall,

my mom would not duck at the memory

of fear thirty years later, when a harmless

helicopter flies overhead in a far away land.

If the loud noise wasn't silencing,

maybe my mother would still have a voice.

My parents would still be in Lebanon, having never met,

my mother continuing her art career in Beirut,

not very far from where my father could’ve stayed in his family's house, instead of leaving them

behind in exchange for a college education in Ohio,

for money to be sent back, for hope to be held onto.

And maybe I would not have been born and maybe

I would've been okay with that,

if given the chance for my parents

to not have to evacuate, to never go back to their home,

to learn my home through them, the arab-and-american-ness

of growing up as half and half but never complete.

My Arabic wouldn’t be broken, it would be whole.

We would not be finding similarities in California’s climate,

the mountains silhouettes similar, the salty ocean air smelling identical,

the cedar trees just like our flag.

I wouldn’t have to explain to people where my parents are from because they’d know.

I would know, too.

If the war did not conquer,

if my parents survived,

if they lived in Beirut for the last thirty years,

separately or together, would the explosion of 2020

have taken their lives? pushed them out? of a place they were never meant to be?

Chosen for the 2024 Central Avenue Poetry Prize

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