By: J. David
In anything we write there is both a decision and a discovery to be made, and that is the important part of the whole storytelling ordeal. Everything else is to the two of them speaking back and forth at each other— new discoveries moving you forward into more questions that must be answered. As writers, we must decide what these answers are or be candid in the fact we are still uncovering them ourselves, anything else would fall short of the honesty required to truly connect with a reader. Every good story has an element of unveiling— where what we’ve been chasing after all along starts to become clear, and expected or not— we are left to contend with whatever is there. At first glance, Set to Music a Wildfire appears to be an attempt to answer the questions “where do I belong,” and “how do I belong,” chasing after an ever-elusive definition of home. Ruth Awad documents her father’s life, from his early days in Lebanon during the bloody civil war to his immigration and later life in America, offering us two competing definitions of home: “the people and places we allow ourselves to belong to,” and “the place we come from and the place we are going.” In the end Ruth does not tell us which one is right, and until the fourth time I read through the collection I couldn’t figure out why she left that part out. It was because, all along, the collection had been about the things which we are capable of surviving. The search for belonging was most obvious in the poems, because that is the chief search of every human, but the more important question that Ruth continually revisits is “can I survive this?” Or to rephrase: “I know I am not home yet, I still have farther to go, but I wonder- will I survive this, what is it that I can lose and still survive?” Can you survive the innocence lost when you discover just how cruel this world is capable of being (Sabra and Shatila Massacre): “How else do you say it—I stood on them / what seemed a tarp-drawn embankment / a hummock of corpses. / Quicksand…” Can you survive in spite of war, in spite of your world tearing itself apart (Gulls): “Men can run- / what else? / What else / will save them from / the world they’ve burned?” Can you survive in the shadow of death, in a world eclipsed by fear (Interview with My Father: Names): “When someone dies in Tripoli, we write their names on paper, / next to their pictures and post them where others can see. / Walk the street where the names wave from the walls, / flutter from windows, buildings grilled with sheets— / breathing paper, beating paper, the streets are paper—“ Can you survive the upheaval of leaving your life behind to come to a place that doesn’t love you (My Father Is the Sea, the Field, the Stone): “Why choose a coast / when my hands are stone? / Why carry a rifle when my blood is a field? / I carry these suitcases full of rain / because I can’t take my country. / If it’s a choice you want—I’ve never known / a world that wasn’t worth dying for.” Can you survive the strife of poverty and the label of strangeness (Lebanese Famine in America): “I push a mop to pay rent, / steal mustard packets / to dress bread slices, / and tell myself it’s enough / it’s enough it’s enough.” (Migratory Patterns): “[we] watch our signal slip past the old frame / and out to the small town that never wanted us—what, with our ratty socks and too-short bangs / and our names. I want the town erased / if it means I’ll never hear Muslim snarled / like a slur…” Can you survive heartbreak and the monumental weight of grief (On the Night You Ask for a Divorce): “Sleepless beside me, you turn / all night like a wave… I inventory what the night does not erase: your coldness, / amphibious raft I envy with my heart.” (Lessons in Grief): “…here I am / half wet and stung / with the mercy of living / where your robe trailed / like a thought across / the kitchen floor… I’m a clockwork animal tied / to fading light, but the days / never stop coming.” The answer Ruth uncovers time and time again is yes. Resoundingly: yes. (Let me be a lamb in a world that wants my lion): “…the black night ahead, and I think, My God, will I ever not be / surprised by what I can survive?”
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