The Etymology of Hair
Threa Almontaser
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The first hair was unbound and coil-thick,
without violence. Back in the beginning, every head had a little round
gateway
entering into fistfuls
of noor —
light you could lose a hand inlight you could cry into.
Now, a girl’s curls can shield her and turn her into a wasp at once.
The etymology of hair
is nest, from the Latin
from my father’s trimmer, glistening and bulked like a filled beehive.
I refused to straighten.
No Arab mother on Steinway Street knew what to do with hair fending for itself —
afraid to touch their daughters, the parts of them left undomesticated. And so I’m sheared
without ceremony. Hush, it’s easier to manage this way.
The soft strands fly out over the city,
stick to everyone like pollen
as I sink
over lost gordian knots
twisted solid with raw shea,
stringing with beads. I’m ugly, God tells me
and I believe him.
I miss the brown water from hair playing in dirt. I miss our struggle — one wild thing
encountering another. Swaddled in thick frizz. Extension
of my blood. And the carpenters.
When one got too close, wings against scalp,
the panicked tangle of us.
I pet the cactus.
Wish my head were a blinding white
bulb, a giant sunflower
with extra sun.
I twist phantom braids in my sleep.
٢
The etymology of hair is conflict is heat is country
ironed of all its ridges
from the Spanish
from the dense wilderness
from my mom’s old block the hair salon on the corner carrying heavy gossip
with heavy strips of foil, blonde dyes,
the steaming sound of ceramic, fat red rollers
falling.
Where a woman names her chipped comb-teeth after conquered battlefields.
Their first view of America: White ladies on the other side of Queens, honeyed hair flat, in place.
The etymology of hair is bullet
is blame
is hearing
We need to ask you a few questions,
and identifying your own hacked braid. From the Old English,
buried in tight buns, greasy sheen of dusk
and spilled seaweed held back with bobby pins, silky doo-rag. Pulled straight, it lurches back like the fat rubber-band used to bind broccoli, leaving red welts on anyone who let go.
The etymology of hair is exposed from the Arabic from the buzzing den
you reach into,
gathering a stranger’s madness like gold nectar.
Take off your hijab if you don’t feel safe.
Young hair, fully garbed, enters a London station, gets pushed into an oncoming train.
Not every veiled thing is frightening
I want to tell the drunk frat boy
darting in front of me, scud of spit on the corner of his mouth,
laughing when I flinch.
Times like those, I can’t help but think of my mother, up to her elbows in a sink somewhere,
patterned skirt wrapped above her waist as she wets her hair for prayer.
Home Security After 9/11
Threa Almontaser
💣 “Consent: If the police show up at your door and ask you if they can come inside to search and you consent to the search, then the police do not need a warrant.”
At the break of dawn, a falling door, children
dreaming of [ ]. Dogs shepherd us outside,
my mother shouting, Let me grab a scarf, please,
just a scarf. Dragged from bed, bleary-eyed, I believe
we’re being abducted by [ ]. Men in blue
bustle me into their van. An old blister
on my heel bursts.
Blood gushes, Mama begging for [ ].
💣 “Plain view: Police do not need a search warrant to seize evidence that is in plain view of a place where the police are legally authorized to be.”
Hours later, escorted inside
to have a bowl of Reese's Puffs
before school, “Number One Dad” mug
in someone’s hands. I eat quick, no
eye contact. Violation is a maggot
nibbling through a nostril. My D.A.R.E shirt
a bullet-proof vest, praying it protects me
from whatever comes next. Pour me another cup
you filthy [ ], one snarls through the cage
of his teeth. I do it when he shifts, shows his [ ],
very aware of my paper-thin lungs, eggshell skull.
There is no boundary of [ ] in a body.
💣 “Is the person whose home or property being investigated/searched expected a degree of privacy? Was that expectation objectively reasonable? I.e., would society as a whole agree that the place or thing should remain private?”
Arab families in New York
crowded in a random search,
rifle cradled in someone’s arm
like a weary mother. Muslims with a cityscape,
security guards, shots ringing a pain
older than time in their chests.
Did they hear my aunt sobbing
over tapped phones on her way to buy milk
as the towers [ ]? How far are you from the [ ]?
How far are you from the [ ]? we cried
on the other end. Are you listening?
We find American flags tooth-picked between
our framed photos of the kaaba. Soon after, my father gets
a home security system – big black pupils
always watching. Just in case, he says.
We speak in [ ], afraid they bugged the rooms,
imagining a system that hunts our [ ].
My parents turn down the music, lock
the kids up, place tracking devices
in all the cars. And at night, I hear
growling K9s, laughter
in the kitchen, click of a [ ].
Middle Eastern Music
Threa Almontaser
sounds like God making poems
like Fairouz not Madonna
sometimes like sandy lashes
or rain-water dripping down bare breasts in a hammam
actually more like coin-rattle
in a beggar's cup on a belly dancer's midriff
sounds like bombastic without
the bombs and sweat beneath a veil I swear it
sounds like a circus of siblings
as an auntie cusses you out
with over-doused atr on everyone’s
khalu but at night it’s your own blood stalking you
in the dark like a bored soldier
these days it’s the sound of being in an airport combing
of suffering swept into a dustpan
with wrinkling tobacco leaves is that the music or
a drone whizzing from above
listen it sounds a little like a hijab fetish
incense and spice packets
a mother chanting God forbid God forbid, it’s history
tidied up to sound better
and homework still riddled with bullet-holes
yet some days it sounds like
Baba blasting Whatsapp videos in the living room
or your grandmother trying to convert
the neighbor’s cat to Islam a cousin crying
on the phone where al-hakuma
are always listening the sex-worker’s whisper
in Amran After the rape I had
no choice it sounds like like the spling splang
of golden tea cups or
the spling splang of swimming
from one busted boat straight into
another, like trying to stay afloat which has the same rhythm as
a khadama’s passport snatched
as she hangs from a fifth story ledge the employer saying I own you
sounds like a sword’s shriek
before the sheep’s slaughter but if you listen harder you can hear
bundles of bones bowing together
prayers softened with need and sunrise, the adhan, all that weight falling
on clean ears, soundless until
the tongue takes on a new tune who else is lost and lying full among the song?
about the writer
Threa Almontaser is a Yemeni-American writer from New York City. She received her MFA from North Carolina State University and is the recipient of fellowships from Tin House, Community of Writers, the Fine Arts Work Center, Idyllwild Arts, and the Kerouac House. She is the winner of Alternating Current's Unsilenced Grant for Muslim American Women Writers and Tinderbox Journal's Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, among other honors. Nominated or included in the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming from Random House, The Offing, American Literary Review, Oxford Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She teaches English to immigrants and refugees in Raleigh and is currently at work on a debut poetry collection. For more, please visit threawrites.com.