HIBBAH JARMAKANI

Excerpts from We The Interwoven

Hibbah Jarmakani is an Arab American born of Syrian immigrant parents. She was four when her family moved to Sioux City, Iowa, where she grew up. She writes poetry and lyrical nonfiction as a form of resistance to existing American media narratives of the political landscape within the Middle East. More recently her writing has confronted issues of identity and anti-Arab sentiment amid the ongoing war in Syria. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in international studies focusing on issues in the Middle East. She has been published in Fools Magazine and hopes to continue both her education and her work as a writer challenging stereotypes wherever they may arise.

“As a child, I often imagined what thoughts haunted my father, especially when he would find himself looking at those ornate iron bars. I imagined he’d ponder how every corridor within the stone walls of the white gate held her laughter, thinking, I can remember so clearly her iridescent eyes looking back at me as we ran around the courtyard exploring every nook of our home. When I walk the streets of Salkhad, I think back to us playing with our cousins on our bikes. She was my confidante, my most trusted companion in causing mischief, to my mother's dismay. I used to imagine our future children playing on the land she helped me plant with our father. Suddenly all of these memories, both imagined and real, were taken from me, just as she was.

Of course these thoughts did not only exist in my father’s mind; they permeated throughout the household. The home beyond the white gate had a river of sadness flowing through it. This river made it impossible to stand within the stone walls without drowning. The white gate that once served to protect the family needed to be forced open. The flowing river needed to rush past the gate and run its course until it came upon dry land. And so it was decided that 1982 would be the year my family moved to America.”