The Etymology of Hair

Threa Almontaser

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The first hair was unbound and coil-thick, 
without violence.                                            Back in the beginning, every head had a little round  
gateway
entering into fistfuls 
of noor  — 
                                                light you could lose a hand inlight you could cry into. 
  
Now, a girl’s curls can shield her and turn her into a wasp                            at once. 
The etymology of hair
       is nest, from the Latin

from my father’s trimmer, glistening and bulked like a filled beehive.         
I refused to straighten.

No Arab mother on Steinway Street knew what to do with hair fending for itself — 
afraid to touch their daughters, the parts of them left undomesticated.         And so I’m sheared 

without ceremony.          Hush, it’s easier to manage this way. 
The soft strands fly out over the city, 
stick to everyone like pollen 

as I sink 
    over lost gordian knots
    twisted solid with raw shea,
    stringing with beads.                         I’m ugly, God tells me
and I believe him. 

I miss the brown water           from hair playing in dirt. I miss our struggle — one wild thing              
 encountering another. Swaddled in thick frizz. Extension

       of my blood.              And the carpenters. 

When one got too close, wings against scalp,     
the panicked tangle of us.     

I pet the cactus. 
Wish my head were a blinding white           
bulb, a giant sunflower     
with extra sun.                            
                                                 
              I twist phantom braids in my sleep.  


٢
The etymology of hair is conflict            is heat          is country    
ironed of all its ridges                            
from the Spanish 
from the dense wilderness    
        
from my mom’s old block        the hair salon on the corner carrying heavy gossip 
with heavy strips of foil, blonde dyes, 
          the steaming sound of ceramic, fat red rollers 
falling. 

Where a woman names her chipped comb-teeth         after conquered battlefields. 
     
Their first view of America: White ladies on the other side of Queens, honeyed hair flat, in place.
The etymology of hair is bullet                 
is blame     
is hearing 
We need to ask you a few questions, 
 
and identifying your own hacked braid. From the Old English, 
    buried in tight buns, greasy sheen of dusk 

and spilled seaweed        held back with bobby pins, silky doo-rag. Pulled straight, it lurches back  like the fat rubber-band used to bind broccoli, leaving red welts on anyone who let go. 
 
The etymology of hair is exposed        from the Arabic       from the buzzing den 
you reach into,
       gathering a stranger’s madness like gold nectar. 
 
Take off your hijab if you don’t feel safe.
 
Young hair, fully garbed, enters a London station, gets pushed into an oncoming train. 
Not every veiled thing is frightening
I want to tell the drunk frat boy 
 
darting in front of me, scud of spit on the corner of his mouth, 
laughing when I flinch. 

Times like those, I can’t help but think of my mother, up to her elbows in a sink somewhere, 
patterned skirt wrapped above her waist                as she wets her hair for prayer.

 
 

Home Security After 9/11

Threa Almontaser

💣 “Consent: If the police show up at your door and ask you if they can come inside to search and you consent to the search, then the police do not need a warrant.”

At the break of dawn, a falling door, children 
dreaming of [         ]. Dogs shepherd us outside,

my mother shouting, Let me grab a scarf, please, 
just a scarf. Dragged from bed, bleary-eyed, I believe 

we’re being abducted by [         ]. Men in blue 
bustle me into their van. An old blister 
on my heel bursts.  
Blood gushes, Mama begging for [         ].  

💣 “Plain view: Police do not need a search warrant to seize evidence that is in plain view of a place where the police are legally authorized to be.”

Hours later, escorted inside
to have a bowl of Reese's Puffs 

before school, “Number One Dad” mug 
in someone’s hands. I eat quick, no 

eye contact. Violation is a maggot
nibbling through a nostril. My D.A.R.E shirt 

a bullet-proof vest, praying it protects me 
from whatever comes next. Pour me another cup

you filthy [              ], 
one snarls through the cage 
of his teeth. I do it when he shifts, shows his [       ],

  very aware of my paper-thin lungs, eggshell skull.
 There is no boundary of [        ] in a body. 

💣 “Is the person whose home or property being investigated/searched expected a degree of privacy? Was that expectation objectively reasonable? I.e., would society as a whole agree that the place or thing should remain private?”

Arab families in New York
crowded in a random search,

rifle cradled in someone’s arm
like a weary mother. Muslims with a cityscape, 
 
security guards, shots ringing a pain
          older than time in their chests. 

Did they hear my aunt sobbing
over tapped phones on her way to buy milk 

as the towers [        ]? How far are you from the [     ]? 
How far are you from the [     ]? 
we cried 

on the other end. Are you listening?
          We find American flags tooth-picked between 

our framed photos of the kaaba. Soon after, my father gets 
a home security system – big black pupils

always watching. Just in case, he says. 
We speak in [          ], afraid they bugged the rooms, 
    
imagining a system that hunts our [              ]. 
My parents turn down the music, lock 

the kids up, place tracking devices 
in all the cars. And at night, I hear 

growling K9s, laughter
in the kitchen, click of a [        ]. 

Middle Eastern Music

Threa Almontaser

sounds like God making poems 

like Fairouz                      not Madonna 

sometimes like sandy lashes 
or rain-water dripping down             bare breasts in a hammam 


actually more like coin-rattle 
in a beggar's cup                         on a belly dancer's midriff 


sounds like bombastic without 
the bombs and sweat                  beneath a veil I swear it 


sounds like a circus of siblings 
as an auntie                     cusses you out 


with over-doused atr on everyone’s 
khalu but at night it’s               your own blood stalking you 


in the dark like a bored soldier     
these days it’s the sound of being        in an airport combing 


of suffering swept into a dustpan 
with wrinkling tobacco leaves                 is that the music or


a drone whizzing from above
listen it sounds a little like              a hijab fetish 


incense and spice packets
a mother chanting God forbid          God forbid, it’s history 


tidied up to sound better 
and homework still                 riddled with bullet-holes 


yet some days it sounds like
Baba blasting Whatsapp videos         in the living room


or your grandmother trying to convert 
the neighbor’s cat to Islam             a cousin crying 


on the phone where al-hakuma 
are always listening                  the sex-worker’s whisper 


in Amran After the rape I had     
no choice it sounds like             like the spling splang 


of golden tea cups or 
the spling splang                  of swimming         


from one busted boat straight into 
another, like trying                  to stay afloat which has the same rhythm as


a khadama’s passport snatched 
as she hangs from a fifth story ledge          the employer saying I own you 


sounds like a sword’s shriek         
before the sheep’s slaughter             but if you listen harder you can hear 

    
bundles of bones bowing together 
prayers softened with need and          sunrise, the adhan, all that weight falling 


on clean ears, soundless until 
the tongue takes on a new tune         who else is lost and lying full among the song?

 

about the writer

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Threa Almontaser is a Yemeni-American writer from New York City. She received her MFA from North Carolina State University and is the recipient of fellowships from Tin House, Community of Writers, the Fine Arts Work Center, Idyllwild Arts, and the Kerouac House. She is the winner of Alternating Current's Unsilenced Grant for Muslim American Women Writers and Tinderbox Journal's Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, among other honors. Nominated or included in the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming from Random House, The Offing, American Literary Review, Oxford Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She teaches English to immigrants and refugees in Raleigh and is currently at work on a debut poetry collection. For more, please visit threawrites.com.