This is a poem, “Two Little Girls” By
- Fawziyya Abu Khalid
I hang on to the hem of her dress like a child hanging
On to the string of an immovable kite
I climb her braid like a squirrel climbing a hazelnut tree
In the late afternoon we jump from one world to another
we play in the wind
like sparrows that opened the door to the cage
She teaches me
names of flowers
the seasons of rain
love of our country
I teach her
stubbornness and mischief . . .
We share one apple and innumerable dreams
We paint a paradise of questions on the face of the desert
We spray each other with the water of the mirage
accompany a fleeting doe
We are surprised by the sunset
In the mystery of dusk
With one of the translations, she ends the poem much like this:
Who can decipher
The riddle?
Who is the mother
and who is the child?
Khalid is talking about a maternal inheritance, the mother-daughter relationship of learning. But here, it becomes a reciprocal relationship where the mother also learns from her child and the two become one. Although, I didn’t really know my mum for the first twenty years of my life, when I did finally start to connect, I realised a few things. She was a High school teacher who taught English. She struggles with mental illness. She’s also very kind, patient and polite.
It was really weird how even though I could not reach her, and that she could not teach me anything for a very long time, and that I hated her because of her shortcomings, how at the age of 21 I look at her, and it’s like looking at a strangely beautiful image of myself.
I pray that when finally you connect with your mum, if you haven’t already, that you become surprised and delighted at the fact, that a lot of your strengths - whether it’s your boldness, street smarts or kindness - were past down to you through her, even when she could not teach them to you herself.
For sometime, we were grieving over the fact that that there was nothing left of the women we once loved as children. But look at yourself in the mirror, because you are her greatest legacy.
And if both of us have what it takes to be the remarkable women our mothers were or have always been,
Then, who is the mother and who is the child?
And is it so bad to be one in the same?
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