Today’s episode is guest hosted by Myka Kielbon.

Transcript

I’m Myka Kielbon and this is The Slowdown.

Recently, I dreamt that my friend and I were moving into a big, old apartment. Once we got the couch in the living room, my grandmother appeared, sitting on it. I sat on the floor beside her, leaning my head against her frail knees.

I’d never seen her in a dream before. I haven’t seen her in a decade. My grandmother died in 2015. For most of my life, her dementia limited her cognition, her memory, and her physical function. But I hold close the memories I have of our time together. She taught me how to make meatballs, to be friendly with the butcher behind the counter, to not be scared to dig my hands into the raw meat, to bring something hot and sweet to the party.

She immigrated to the US in 1945, after teenage years we know little about. Early in the war, her family fled her birthplace outside of Minsk. Her immigration papers say she left Europe from a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. She spoke Polish. She became a seamstress, and a mother, and a wife, living most of her life in the suburban Spokane Valley.

A few days after the dream, I went to a party that had a psychic. I got in line and planned to ask why lately I’d felt so close to the veil. I’d been seeing angel numbers constantly, and dreaming of the dead. But the psychic’s allotted time ended before I could ask. I figured it was a question I would have to answer myself.

We are witnessing mass suffering on this earth. We are in a moment full of fear and rage. I think my grandmother, a woman who witnessed and bore great suffering, a woman who was courageous and loving, came to me to remind me of the strength we need to carry each other.

Today’s poem explores what we inherit, what we share, and what we are liable to lose.

Aleppo
by Hala Alyan

I talk back to the videos. Someone ate paper. Someone isn’t eating anymore.

Mornings like this, I wish I never loved anyone. What is it to be a lucky city, a 
       row of white houses strung with Christmas lights.

There is no minute

A fortuneteller told me I’d marry one of Aleppo’s sons. That was seven years ago.

to spare.

Yesterday I dreamt my grandmother was a child who led me by the hand to a 
       cave. Inside I found the wolf. I buried a dagger in his hot throat.

This is the dark the world let in, and learned

:: to stomach
:: to shoulder
:: to keep

I woke up with my hands wet.

They are just

This ugly human impulse to make it mine.

hours away.

The Syria in my grandmother is a decade too old. When she dies, she will take it 
       with her.

This is how a lone bomb can erase a lineage: the nicknames for your mother, the 
       ghost stories, the only song that put your child to sleep.

No one is evacuating me.

Your citadel fed to the birds. Your mosque. Someone will make an art project out 
       of your tweets.

My daughter.

The prophet’s birthday arrives without a single firework.

Surrender. Or die.

Or die.

In the city bombs peck the streets into a braille that we pretend we cannot read. 
       A street fool of

:: girl bodies
:: mattresses
:: cooked hearts

Meanwhile, the wolf sleeps in his wolf palace. He drops each ghost into a water 
       hole and licks his perfect teeth.

We were

a

free

people

We could paper all of Arkansas with your missing.

May you give us nowhere else to look. May you burn every newspaper with your 
       name on it. Every textbook. Every memorial.

This too.

“Aleppo” by Hala Alyan from THE TWENTY-NINTH YEAR © 2019 Hala Alyan. Used by permission of the author and HarperCollins.