Sherry Chandler

I did not attend the Naomi Shihab Nye master class at the recent Women Writers Conference in Lexingon, and I will no doubt be punished for my sins. I did, however, go to her joint reading with another Palestinian-American poet, Nathalie Handal, and the experience was uplifting. The two brought tremendous energy and joy into the room.

Rosalie O’Leary, who did attend the workshop, has been kind enough to supply me with links to some of the material Nye shared, and although the words on the page don’t have the dynamic of Nye’s voice, they are well worth reading.

The essay, What Do You Think, posted at Veterans for America, is Nye’s account of travelling through Africa, Egypt, England, and Canada and asking everyone she met “What do you think of the war in Iraq?”

I asked bellboys, taxi drivers, shopkeepers and students, usually before we had spoken about anything else. I copied their comments in a notebook. Not one person refused to answer.

Some offered single words. “Disaster.” Or “catastrophe.” Others cursed. No one said, “Brilliant idea.”

I love this opening passage; it is so typical of Nye:

The Lion Park is fenced in, so one could hardly call it “wild” but it was the best chance I had to see animals during my week there.

Inside the Lion Park, Stan [the driver] told me his favorite viewing tactic.

“You stop where there is nothing happening — no zebra, no lion — and you stare. Any people in cars behind you stop and stare too. If you wait long enough, something amazing usually comes into view.”

We stopped. The Japanese tourists in a van behind us craned their necks to see what we were looking at. Then an impressive white lion strutted out from behind a bush to drink from a puddle.

“See!” said Stan proudly. “That’s all it takes, patience!”

It’s the sort of word that can bring a lump into the throat some days. Many of us miss “patience” in the speedy culture of our times. It’s a simple word, like “bridge” or “cooperate” or “dialogue.”

Dialogue is the key in the prose poem Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal with which Nye closed her reading.

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”

Well — one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. “Help,” said the flight service person. “Talk to her. What is her problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she did this.”

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. “Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, Sho bit se-wee?”

The minute she heard any words she knew — however poorly used — she stopped crying.

At her reading, Nye told a story about her grandma, who said, in spite of all the violence and war she had seen in Palestine, she had never lost the peace in her heart. This poem about sharing stories and cookies in an airport terminal gives us a picture of how we can all carry peace in our hearts. It ends like this, but you must read it all:

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate — once the crying of confusion stopped — has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.