Book Review 2018-003
Armeika by Umniya Najaer
2018 by Akashic Books, 28 pages
(I received a review copy of the box set of chapbooks, New-Generation African Poems, this is a part of from the publisher).
Umniya, born to Sudanese parents, begins this collection with a quick vocabulary lesson noting that armeik is a verb meaning 'to throw you' and that amreika is a noun standing for the United States of America and then notes that "armeika is a term i have heard used in the US-based Sudanese diaspora to imply that the country will toss/fling/throw / dispose of one." I sadly admit that while I've noticed headlines over the years, I do not have a great knowledge, or understanding, of Sudan, either pre, or post, split--it's something this collection has me hoping to rectify in the near future.
The first of fifteen poems within the chapbook, "beit fundurq masr al-khaliq ghost house," hits the reader hard:
bashir's security apparatus repurposed the
widower's home, converted the master bedroom
into the site of al-hafla, the storage room into a cell,
the children's play area into a mock execution ground
with "al-hafla" asterisked with a note that this means 'the party,' or "what the torturers call the initial act of torture. The torturers blindfold and collectively beat, rape, and abuse the newly imprisoned activists/artists/racial minorities for anywhere from six to twenty-four hours."
The poem continues to notice that:
for years the ghost house is invisible in plain sight,
masked whiel the neighbors go on hanging laundry,
to dry, quickly, before the coffee boils over,
stirring warm sour dough & whistling hamza al din's tune,
about a bird whose addresses are dreams,
etched into beating hearts--oblivious, that just next door,
that very tune is your last anchor, a realm
between death's cliff & the flesh-tattered
dentures of afterlife's shore
The next two poems continue with similar beginnings:
<the ghost who lives>
only when your torturer is certain beyond a
doubt that he severed your spirit from you
body, does he consider releasing you--ghost--
now emaciated & battered, to stagger into a
broken world
and
<ghost takes shots>
after months, you limp your way home,
& on the way come up with a story to tell your wife
you cannot tell her about the rape,
the mock execution & the failed kidney
The poems then shift:
<moya zargaa (n. blue water, drinking water>
at home i drink from al nil,
en route, i sip the mediterranean's water grave
in armeika, i do not know the origin of water
while weeping for home
and
<amatu>
until one day she tucked kisses
into her children's children's palms
& promised to return with green cards
so soon no one would have time to miss
but the ticket did not take her
to the promised destination, instead,
armeika was a concussion to years
of wide-eyed nights in the basement
and
<crossing the ocean,
this is not what anyone expected>
one day a wife to a doctor,
suddenly a widow in a strange land
The poems capturing the definition of armeika given to Najaer's readers early on both in tone and their scope.
The last two poems, "homecoming after twenty years, 2010" and the six sectioned "in a truck climbing the left ventricle of omdurman's heart, three girls; two cut, one uncut" end the collection powerfully with a return to Sudan after 20 years in armeika and seeing it at the precipice of division, as well as a look at female genital mutilation. Throughout the collection, Najaer lays things right out for the reader--nothing is hidden or even softened a little bit. Trauma of various types are not shied away from, instead they are a big focus of Najaer's work. It's a brave collection, and one I expect to be going back to often.
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