Fady Joudah

So in Arabic, the function of the language allows for the rhyme, the radif, to be one letter.

So the rhyme scheme itself is several letters at the end of a word.

but the last letter... So if I tell a verse from memory and it ends, you have to find a verse from your memory that begins with that letter that ends the last one.

So we would have... Sometimes on our bus rides from home, we would just get into these, you know, duels.

And, yeah.

And so I really...

from a young age, had such a fascination with the way the alphabet makes music in the mind.

The Tea and Sage Poem.

At a desk made of glass, in a glass-walled room with red airport carpet, an officer asked my father for fingerprints, and my father refused.

So another offered him tea, and he sipped it.

The teacup, template for fingerprints.

My father says it was just hot water with a bag.

My father says in his country, because the earth knows the scent of history, it gave the people sage.

I like my tea with sage from my mother's garden.

Next to the snapdragons she calls fish mouths coming out for air.

A remedy for stomach pains she keeps in the kitchen where she always sings.

First she is hagger boiling water where tea is loosened.

Then she drops in it a pinch of sage and lets it sit a while.

She tells a story.

The groom arrives late to his wedding wearing only one shoe.