Maryan Abdinur's Poetry

I want to go home..

But I don't know where home is

If you are no longer there

Does it still have laughter?

Where is my home?

Does it still live in your feet?

Are you there?

Are you here?

I want to come home to you.

I feel like i could walk from here to you barefoot - and barebacked

Across the 7 seas - maybe on the back of humpback whale - I hear they are home now

I feel like I could cross realms for you - one to the next to find you as you did for me

I could find you in the center of the ocean - your body calls to me

The line where the sun comes home to the earth calls to me

The rocky roads, the white soil, the tall grass call to me

The words you taught me call to me; they come hunting/ calling to me

Oh! How I miss when my home lived in your blessed feet

Maybe now I will move my agal to my feet…. Or to Muzamil’s

Will you still call to me?

Tell me stories - teach me some more

I will cross realms to come to you

I tell Allah about you everyday, as you told him about me

I say “Ya Raab, Ya Noor,  light her way, 

She did right by me, bless her and protect her.

As she reads the above poem to a group of a dozen people at BIPOC Foodways Alliance Table gathered to eat her fragrant barris iyo hilib (literally “goat and rice”)– Maryan Abdinur begins to weep. 

Silently, her 11-year-old son Muzamil rises from his place at the table to join, and embrace her. They stand as a singular pillar, until she finishes. 

“This poem might make someone cry,” she said before the reading. 

Turns out, that someone was her. 

Minnesota has the largest population of Somalis in the country, estimated at nearly 90,000. 

Like many of those, Maryan settled here after fleeing the Somali Civil War, which has been ongoing in some capacity since the 1980’s. 

“I don’t think there’s a Somali who can answer what is causing the war,” she says. “I don’t think there are any two tribes who agree on what happened.” But one thing seems clear: much of the tumult is a legacy of colonialism.

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