Melissa Croghan, poet, novelist, and artist, who lives in Simsbury, recently spent a month in Jordan, teaching poetry and art to young Syrian refugees, ages 6 to 19. She will soon return to continue her work in Jordan. Melissa has also worked with under-served children in after-school programs at the YWCA in Hartford and at Charter Oak Cultural Center. Earlier, she taught creative writing and English at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a masters and Ph.D. in English. She has published a book of poems and paintings, “Cliff Walk,” and a novel, “The Tracking Heart.” Her upcoming memoir, “The Peace Children of Syria,” will include some of the poems appearing below.
– Rennie McQuilkin, CT poet laureate
Prep Work in a Civil War
I rise early to the task. Before I set off to teach the children art and poetry
I must count out the sketch pads, glitter and stickers, lined notebook paper
and above all, the pencils
for my refugee students this morning. Each day a different number, new children,
at another unknown refugee site in Jordan.
I used to be a generalist in this task. To break up the monotony of staring
as the shavings mounted in the transparent plastic sharpener, I’d think of places
my students fled. I began a little chant as I sharpened. This pencil is for the child
from Damascus, this for the teens from Palmyra, this for the mother and baby
from Homs, this is for all the children from Aleppo.
I have changed all that,
I am a more sophisticated pencil sharpener now.
I assign the names of my refugees to each pencil I sharpen.
Here is one for Gabir, the consoler,
one for you, Hilal, tiny boy whose neighborhood is entirely gone,
and a pencil for Jamal who wept because she thought she could not keep her art.
I sharpen a pencil for Ola and the old man she took care of crossing the desert
in search of safe haven, for Fatima who was starving,
for Yara whose sandpaper lips saw no water for days, and one for you, Tarek,
and for your mother in the wheelchair whose legs were blown off in the war.
Each morning before my teaching begins, I sharpen my faculties,
sharpen the dulled edges
of my heart gone numb from multiple self-portraits of Syria.
From Homs He Was
Wailing, hands clenched and brows furled,
no more than six or seven, this boy in a shirt torn
at the shoulder, and raggedy pants.
As for those lavish brows,
I was mistaken —
less fury, more fear,
his face streaked in dirt and tears until
we find his mother.
She sits down heavily in a capacious abaya,
arranging herself with comforting clucks
to an infant in her arms.
I hold out an orange marker and drawing paper.
This boy with big brows and tiny hands
takes the magic marker. He goes to work.
Such limpid forms he creates.
We marvel at his drawing
and he marvels
at his picture of a boy on a bike,
eyes forward
and ZOOM marks
flying out behind.
Sound and Sense near the Border of Syria
I sit down at the art table with Aya, Akrum, Sargon, Tarek, and Sara.
Free time after the exercises, and all of us drawing anything we want.
Drawing together invites
a hush, but today’s hush is different. Intense, charged —
you could not cut this hush with a sword.
There is the sound of pencils gliding over paper,
and the odd staccato of graphite made by Sargon. Rat-a-tat-tat
marks on paper.
I nod encouragingly at Aya’s portrait of her father. She makes
the pupils of his eyes the size of olive pits, and dark as a starless night.
She studies her drawing, erases a tiny section for the white of the iris.
I cannot help but smile. Aya has found light.
A few miles north of here, in Irbid, you can hear artillery from the war.
Rat-a-tat-tat. Aya pauses, pencil midair.
Her father was conscripted by the rebels.
Her father who is lost to her. Her pencil touches down
and she begins a cross-hatching that covers his mouth, his nose, his eyes.
Not knowing what to say, I say Very nice. A different kind of shading.
Tarek
He in the pink shirt, the largest boy in my class
sitting apart from the other students.
But his chair scrapes forward
to the table when we begin the Inventive Animal Exercise.
His pencil comes to life
and soon his fantastic creature with goggle eyes
that can see all the way home to Syria
draws oohs and ahhhs from the other refugee children.
Abruptly Tarek is up and out the door. What have I said,
how have I failed?
After class, in the car with my translator, Waed,
I pass the medical center
and there is the sun brightening
a pink shirt — it’s Tarek pushing a wheelchair, his mother.
Waed says her legs were lost in an explosion.
I hang out the car window. Tarek, how are you?
He beams at me. Alhamdulillah!
It means Praise God, and All is good.
The Kindest Heart
I.
There she is, the old woman in the shoe, too many children,
what will she do? They are streaming across the desert, begging
to pass the border, and the old woman Jordan cannot bear
to be unkind. She opens her arms, they ache
from being wide open, they ache from the work of giving shelter,
feeding so many there is straining at the laces.
II.
The old woman is wringing her hands
Inside, there is no more broth and bread.
No more bowls of milk for either children
or the feral cats everywhere in Amman.
All are thin and starving
in the shadow world of the refugee.
Home is a Strange Place Now
after a month away in Jordan —
heavy bowers of green on all sides
and I in shock at the
absence of desert such space there echoing.
Plainly I hear Teacher, teacher!
Words the refugee children have been taught.
One of the counselors, Areej, tells me
These children want you
all the time.
Here, branches toss, the rain is coming down hard,
and the wind
howling.
Only the wind, I tell myself —
and the children of Mosul
and the fall of Raqqa
and the fall of Damascus
and the fall of Palmyra.
The howl of refugees.
I have seen their faces,
I have been with them these many days.
They are the storm,
they are the center
and we are in it, too.
Thirsty
Missing those children I taught for a month in Amman,
the Syrian refugees who live on the streets
or packed in cubicles,
I come home to Connecticut and a gloomy turn of heart,
home to extreme physical activity, swimming in freezing lake water,
galloping on horseback, anything to cope.
Tearing down the jumping trail, my excitable horse rears —
I fly up and briefly examine the treetops,
fly down, landing on the hard droughty ground,
my back in a dozen pieces —
Three days, no water, and still no green light to go under the knife.
Nurse, could I have a drop of water?
Sssssorry. Sounding like a snake.
Ice chips? Just a few, please.
Sorry, you had your quota.
A light appears, hovers above my hospital bed and finds itself a form.
Yara! The Syrian girl with light brown eyes and a royal blue abaya,
her face as solemn as it was in poetry class at the refugee center.
She did not smile, she does not smile now, but she does levitate.
She flies above my bed with a long handled ladle in her hand.
A drop spills on me. Water!
The flaps at the end of her blue abaya dance in the air vent breeze.
You have summoned me, she states.
You will have water; you must be patient.
I lick my bone-dry lips.
Yara, you had to go a long time without water when your family
escaped the war, that week crossing the desert.
Her eyes darken. What family?
Yara, come back.
All poems copyright (c) 2016 by Melissa Croghan. CT Poet Laureate Rennie McQuilkin selects work for CT Poets Corner by invitation.
