For this research check-in, I figured out some more parts to my project. I have written the last two poems for my project, so I have now written all six. I included them below. I also did some revising of my poems, and I ended up combining two of my Phase 1 poems together into one poem. I also added a few things to my works cited and sent it to Anna. I then looked at images from the artists I included in my proposal, Beth Lo, Helen Zughaib, and Shireen Taweel. I noticed that they include lots of language, figures, and place (both landscape and architecture) in their artwork about identity. I chose to focus on place as the theme of my identity tapestries. Shireen Taweel uses metals and more natural/monochrome colors, while Lo and Zughaib both use bright colors. Beth lo and Zughaib both use stylistic imagery, while Taweel’s is more about complex geometric and arabesque patterns. All three are explicit in ideas of culture and identity (recognizably so).
My two new poems:
Poem #1
Phase 2: In Syria
Aleppo walls rich in sandy browns speckle the rooftop view from the Citadel
Until they blur and fade into the foggy heat in the distance
The mosque’s spire reaches over the rest
The green domes harmonizing with the treetops intermittent in the
Sharp angles of boxy buildings
She loved this view-
This new place that glimmered bronze in her mind
Today’s heat was not so intense and the bustling city
Was no longer harsh on her small-town ears
This old building was part of her history, her last name,
The people she had just come to know
And as Arabic rolled off the tongues
Of the cousins who stood behind her
She wondered at who it was
That brought her to be in this place
Perhaps her family line had worked here
Some long time ago when the arrow slits were used
To fend off enemy armies approaching the fortress
She ran her hands over the ancient stone
Perhaps it would tell her what she had never known:
There was so much more,
She had a history she belonged to
Not one where she floated alone in a deep sea
The way it had felt back in America
as the child of immigrants
She had a people she was not severed from
They pressed date cookies into molds,
And wrapped grape leaves into rolls stuffed with rice
This food they all knew was the food of their people
Entering the gaping arch of this fortress
Had felt like crossing realms
Where time and space blurred with the past
And she was but a dust fleck in the span of history
This new home, this place enveloped her
in the possibilities of who she could be
A return to a place she hadn’t known she needed to see
A new belonging that welcomed her back like an old friend
She didn’t stand out so much anymore
The people here knew how to say her name and
They warmly hugged her like they had known her her whole life
And her world expanded to include these new hundreds of relatives
And she instantly loved them as one only does with those who share your blood
Her Arabic was not quite fluent enough,
To express all she had to say to these people, the city,
These floors that carried the weight of her history
Up here the air was clear of the stench of cigarettes-
But even that had garnered her fondness
The Athan rings from five mosques at once,
The call to prayer’s echoes even reach this rooftop
Sound waves weaving together and repeating each other
There was no sound so engulfing, so mesmerizing as this
And it felt as familiar as running her fingers over fraying prayer beads
When it suddenly stopped she instantly missed the embrace of those voices
This home was different, new, exciting
Here she was part of a majority
And no watched her or her sisters as if
They were exotic caged birds
This city held stories she had yet to discover
And memories like myths to her American self-
And she did not know how she could possibly leave it all behind.
Poem #2
Phase 3 New Mosque poem:
Rich maroon spotted with golden yellow
diamonds pattern the lush carpet
She sits here, Qur’an in hand reading as the sun
sets slowly behind the mountains
Maghred prayer will take place soon,
And as she sits cross legged
In her black galabia she feels a heightened sense
Of belonging among the diverse group of women
From all different parts of the world, all united
At this time of prayer.
She greets a friend with cheek kisses and once the call of the
Muzzin echoes through the prayer hall she
Makes her way in delicate footsteps
To the forming line, anticipating the first
God is Great before her arms will cross
And she will hang on to every word in the beautiful recitation of the
Imam who reads the opening to the Qur’an
In lilting movements.
As she prostrates, she whispers glory is to God
and once the prayer is done, she turns her head to either side
people stand but she continues to sit there,
reveling over the moment of peace and thinking how
everyone belongs to prayer.
Everyone in that room thanks God for thier blessings,
And as she stands and looks out the window at the mountain range visible from this new mosque she knows that there are moments when she does not feel so
Different.
It matters less where you come from
And more what you aim to do
With those small moments of repetition, of life, of prayer.
I also chose which poems I am going to use for each tapestry. I decided each tapestry is going to depict a symbolic place (that relates/is a metaphor for identity during each phase of my understanding).
Below I have the three poems I have chosen, which I will make some final revisions to (so they are still drafts) but they hold all of the key points I wanted to include on identity. Below each phase (which is also the title of each poem) I have also listed the place/image that will be the subject of each tapestry.
Phase 1: A Sort-of American Child
Tapestry: Horsetooth sunset
The Colorado foothills frame her childhood
They always lingered like a painting in the distance,
A compass anchoring west, pulling her towards them
Horsetooth pointing towards the sky,
A rock that seems too square and bare within the rolling peaks
She was born here- in Fort Collins
A little girl with a foreign name that appeared
As the publisher on encyclopedias
The kids in her class,
The Sams, Taylors, Annas
Didn’t quite know what to make of the
Name that was not spelled as it was pronounced
By their English tongues
One teacher the little girl corrected every week in second grade,
She gave up and answered to this name that was not hers
Telling herself it wasn’t so bad
She was goofy and gullible and perhaps
Not as American
As the classmates who celebrated the holidays
They did crafts for in class,
The green layers of her paper Christmas tree and
Carol singing so familiar for something she
Was not taught to believe in
Her father baked baklava that she brought to school,
And it was often that people would ask her for them
They were like magic- all of a sudden they noticed her
Sitting in the corner
As they held those pastry swirls,
Green pistachios in filo shells
Sticky in their hands from the carameled-sugar coating
A delicacy of her people
Back in Syria
She liked showing off
When classmates were impressed
With her knowledge of Arabic
She’d say tree and book and water
And they’d say it back
Struggling over throaty consonants
Most of the time though,
She just did her best to fit in
She sang those carols and corrected her name and went to their parties
And she hoped that perhaps, just perhaps, they would not notice
She was different
The oranges and pinks that dipped down to those peaks
During summer sunsets-
She saw them on the way to the Friday night prayers
And she said lookto her family and pointed
As they drove through familiar neighborhood streets lined in pointed wood houses
And she watched engrossed as the colors deepened, changed, darkened
Into the lid of night
Phase 2: In Syria
Tapestry: Entrance to Citadel
Aleppo walls rich in sandy browns speckle the rooftop view from the Citadel
Until they blur and fade into the foggy heat in the distance
The mosque’s spire reaches over the rest
The green domes harmonizing with the treetops intermittent in the
Sharp angles of boxy buildings
She loved this view-
This new place that glimmered bronze in her mind
Today’s heat was not so intense and the bustling city
Was no longer harsh on her small-town ears
This old building was part of her history, her last name,
The people she had just come to know
And as Arabic rolled off the tongues
Of the cousins who stood behind her
She wondered at who it was
That brought her to be in this place
Perhaps her family line had worked here
Some long time ago when the arrow slits were used
To fend off enemy armies approaching the fortress
She ran her hands over the ancient stone
Perhaps it would tell her what she had never known:
There was so much more,
She had a history she belonged to
Not one where she floated alone in a deep sea
The way it had felt back in America
as the child of immigrants
She had a people she was not severed from
They pressed date cookies into molds,
And wrapped grape leaves into rolls stuffed with rice
This food they all knew was the food of their people
Entering the gaping arch of this fortress
Had felt like crossing realms
Where time and space blurred with the past
And she was but a dust fleck in the span of history
This new home, this place enveloped her
in the possibilities of who she could be
A return to a place she hadn’t known she needed to see
A new belonging that welcomed her back like an old friend
She didn’t stand out so much anymore
The people here knew how to say her name and
They warmly hugged her like they had known her her whole life
And her world expanded to include these new hundreds of relatives
And she instantly loved them as one only does with those who share your blood
Her Arabic was not quite fluent enough,
To express all she had to say to these people, the city,
These floors that carried the weight of her history
Up here the air was clear of the stench of cigarettes-
But even that had garnered her fondness
The Athan rings from five mosques at once,
The call to prayer’s echoes even reach this rooftop
Sound waves weaving together and repeating each other
There was no sound so engulfing, so mesmerizing as this
And it felt as familiar as running her fingers over fraying prayer beads
When it suddenly stopped she instantly missed the embrace of those voices
This home was different, new, exciting
Here she was part of a majority
And no watched her or her sisters as if
They were exotic caged birds
This city held stories she had yet to discover
And memories like myths to her American self-
And she did not know how she could possibly leave it all behind.
Phase 3: The Embracing of Both
Tapestry: Snow Covered Cul-de-sac
Who knew that Aleppo blood would be walking through an old Colorado town
Wrapped in black gloves and grey jacket,
Feet encased in fur lined boots-
perhaps snowing, or just the wind
blowing snow off crabapple trees
A chill lurks over undisturbed snow
brushing against her fabric shell
night clouds glowing orange, snow blurring the mountain frame
Arms like a gradient of warmth from finger tips to shoulder blades
The roofs and trees trimmed in bulbs of the other houses of
that cul-de-sac where she rode her scooter round and round
sit patiently beneath that blanket,
her own house bare of Christmas cheer
Back in Syria, white has only covered the streets once
maybe twice in their memory
and though they are no strangers to the cold
Aleppo tans become dulled in the frigid winter air
The house that is the view she sees from her window every morning
With orange paint and maroon window panes
She felt like a translator bridging worlds
The point in an angle where two lines meet
In that coated silence,
Thick like a heaping mound of white rice
Aleppo blood relished that moment of stillness
Where the world stopped and nature could not care less
Who she was or where she came from
And she realized it’s a choice, which heritage she holds most dear
Here is a picture my family took in Syria that I will use as a reference in the first tapestry I have started (the one for phase 2):
Here are the colors I chose for my Citadel tapestry:
Here is the drawing I did on the warp so that I can fill in the shapes:
Here is the progress for my first tapestry