The Foreigner
Nashwa Nasreldin
She roams around my garden
nonchalantly, no need
to know where she came from,
nor where she is going.
She pauses at my rusted bike
to rub her neck against the tyre
then scurries off when
she spies me staring.
Reaching the fence,
instead of jumping, she
presses through the tall grass,
lifting each leg up like a horse parading
then slips behind the apple tree.
From the corner of my eye,
I see a small face
peek from a gap in the green.
I want to reach out
and stroke her neck,
ruffle its black and white stripes,
but as soon as I stand
she steps back, turns and leaps,
as if she owes me nothing.
nonchalantly, no need
to know where she came from,
nor where she is going.
She pauses at my rusted bike
to rub her neck against the tyre
then scurries off when
she spies me staring.
Reaching the fence,
instead of jumping, she
presses through the tall grass,
lifting each leg up like a horse parading
then slips behind the apple tree.
From the corner of my eye,
I see a small face
peek from a gap in the green.
I want to reach out
and stroke her neck,
ruffle its black and white stripes,
but as soon as I stand
she steps back, turns and leaps,
as if she owes me nothing.
Nashwa Nasreldin is a writer, freelance editor and translator of Arabic literature. She is the translator of the collaborative novel, Shatila Stories, and co-translator of Samar Yazbek's memoir, The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria. She is a contributing editor of ArabLit Quarterly, a journal of Arabic literature in translation.
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