October feature writer: Sharifa Tartoussi

Sharifa A Tartoussi is a dental student, poet and performer. Sharifa is involved in several creative projects, most notably becoming half the founding party of GriffinSpeak; a spoken word event that creates space for voices from marginalised groups around Melbourne. Her style has been described as teetering on the boundary between the fire that warms and the fire that burns with a mix of traditional storytelling, millennial boundary pushing and raw emotion with influences from eastern and western art and literature owing to her traditional Arab upbringing in a western climate. She released her first Chapbook “ColourBlind” in early 2018.

---

We talk about blood

We talked about blood

The way it pools in basins and nails,

Turns brown when you leave it to soak too long

And stains.

Tayta has lived in this house forty two years And learns to repurpose her memories,

Shudders while we wait for the fireworks to echo,

Says that we build our veins

Into the places we choose to stay,

Says that they hid bread in the walls

During the war

And Um Jamal died full

Next door in the house

With the red water

And heartbreak in the bathtub,

Says that the first one passes

And the grief bleeds into all the others,

And what are we in the end

But the children of war?

And what is war

But a mother disciplining her careless children?

But what about the blood on our hands tayta? What about the people who left

And the stories baba doesn’t tell anymore?

Baba’s hands are weathered

From tearing and replanting roots,

His palms are the geography of every place We have bled and fled,

His home is built in cherished memories

And forgetting,

Says that we were lucky

:We,

The land of opportunity,

Doors wide open,

Future bathed in sunlight

Children

But the homeland landscape in his eyes lingers As he tells me that I could never survive back there

With my loud voice and my Australian English,

Says that

It’s always political

And what are we but the children of politics?

And what are politics

But a father disciplining his unjust children?

But what about the blood on our hands Baba?

What about the white men

And the people who left?

We call living the war: survival

We call remembering it: gratitude

We call refusing to:

Weakness

Baba hurts his back at work,

Shows us the scars from that one time

He got his arm stuck in the machine

And the blood clots under his nails,

And mama says the sacrifice happens before the bleeding,

Says that the fireworks took his hope with their echoes

And now we can not dream straight anymore,

Says that they packed all their things in the dark

And boarded the boat to Cyprus,

Says the coastline over Beirut still makes her cry,

Says that it isn’t always quite sadness

And what are we but the children of sadness?

And what is sadness

But home calling us to come back?

But what about the blood on our hands mama? What about the lives we build

And the ones we don’t?

What about the people who leave?

What about the white men and the stories baba doesn’t tell anymore?

What name do you put on a mass grave?

Are we still casualties of war

If not the dead

But the pooling in the aftermath?

:The post-terrorism, Lead boot identity children,

I saw myself on the front page of the newspaper

Wearing a different face the other week

And now Jihad is a dirty word and shakespeare is irrelevant What do white men know of tragedies When they put the blood of our ancestors on our hands ?

And who are our younger siblings But the maskless villains Of a world that they have never known

To not hate them

And what were you wearing on september 11, 2001?

And why do we all look so different now?

And how long must we stay hidden? And what are we but the children of hiding?

And what is hiding but an orphaned sense of identity

Trying to distinguish between the call of home

And the false promise of something better?

But what about the blood on our hands?

They crossed the sea for you

And now all they can taste is the salt in their eyes Does guilt pass down through generations?

Some days I just want to know If home will remember my name

Or if it ever learnt it

But what about the blood on our hands?

I look at myself in the mirror

And ask the white girl to own her privilege

It wasn’t my ancestors who built this city

On rattling bones and smallpox

But what am i but a benefactor

Of the actions of somebody else’s

And what about the blood of my hands?

The way it mixes

and pools

And who’s blood is it now?

Maybe,

in the end,

we all die of broken hearts

And what is a heart

But a place to hide the blood a while?

Let it know that there are shades of grief

That stain brown when you leave them too long

And those that were brown to begin with

And what about the blood of my hands mama? Which one is it mama?

Are we ever going back mama?

What about the people who left?

What about death?

What about building graves on black bones and smallpox?

And all these white memories

The ones with the

loud voices

And the Australian English

Where do i put those?

And what are we but the children of context?

And what is context but

a map of all the places we have been?

And finally

The blood pools in the arches of my feet

And the borders of my palms In apology

:In sorry, I will be better,

Even when homeland’s call feels foreign,

Even when we look like this,

Even in opportunistic tongues,

:Even

In traitor skin.