“You live here now, you can take all of that off.”
I untangle the dark thread of your bias from around my heart, and discard it. Turn.
After years of yearning for a child, I bend in prayer and feel the first flutter of her movement.
I reach my hand out to the golden thread of gratefulness and wrap it around my heart. Turn.
I sit at an iftar table full of women alone. No one speaks to me; instead they talk about me in Turkish. I offer to pour water for the woman next to me; she laughs and turns away.
I pull the dark thread of hurt from around my heart, and release it. Turn.
I’m in the Turkish grocery store three months after my husband left me. A man I vaguely know has cornered me and is telling me urgently about how his aunt’s husband left her for their teenage Azeri neighbor. I am uncomfortable until I realize he is really saying “I look at you and I see my aunt . . . my mother . . . my sister . . .” and my heart cracks.
I grasp the golden thread of acceptance and wrap it around my heart. Turn.
“Sister, your voice is your awrah, you should not be speaking here.”
I pull the dark thread of your twisted expectation from around my heart, and release it. Turn.
A woman confronts me about my headscarf over the potatoes in the grocery store. I try to stay calm and, babbling, compare it to wearing crucifix necklaces. Her face relaxes as her hand grabs at the necklace I couldn’t see under her blouse.
I reach for the golden thread of shared humanity, and wrap it around my heart. Turn.
I come around the corner and the imam flinches at seeing a woman in the mosque.
I untangle your sickness from around my heart and discard it. Turn.
My daughter gazes into the water as I dip my paddle into the lake. I see a gaggle of Yemeni refugee girls gathered on the bank, staring at us in our kayaks. Their mothers huddle nearby on their picnic blanket, unmoving, as the girls run to keep pace with us, pointing at my headscarf and burkini. “You’re lucky!”
I reach for the golden thread of possibility and opportunity, and wrap it around my heart. I pray those girls will remember me, gliding on the water, free, and do the same. Turn.
I whirl through the moments and seasons of my life, touched by the bad and by the good, continually learning to release the bad and reaching for the source of all good.
Written for the Daybreak Dispatch, by Rebecca Chirak, Writing Circle Member