I Can Only Wonder

If we are always foreigners when one 

of us walks across the Pont de Sully

[what is then foreigner?] 

I can only wonder 

It is not the color 

the sun gave us,

a hue can’t 

be a foreigner,

and the sun can’t 

make someone 

become a foreigner.

I can only wonder 

Is it something that emerges from 

our dark pupils while we 

contemplate their strange buildings,

as if each of those constructions was

a tiny piece of the labyrinthine puzzle 

that they stubbornly call “city”? 

I can only wonder

But don’t pay much attention to my words,

it is only my [our] wandering soliloquy,

a conversations that I have with a wave 

of borrowed voices that aren’t mine. 

Because when I think about home

a soft whisper invades my memory

and I imagine that back in Essaouira

there is someone sitting at a table 

awaiting my arrival to have dinner

while we talk about the years I spent abroad

seeking for an alley that I couldn’t find. 

I can only wonder 

Because a Parisian attic has nothing in common with the undulant floating of a fishing boat amidst the Atlantic Ocean, and as I keep walking through the labyrinthine streets of this endless city, where people are so proud of a tower with flickering lights, I can’t avoid pondering [while I look at the top of that famous tower] that “a poet living in an attic has nothing in common with a fisherman pulling with his arms the heavy fishing net with the catch of the day: [sardines] [mostly sardines] [only sardines].

And Paris [where you/he/she and I/We/Us are always foreigners] has nothing in common with a camel carrying tourists alongside the Moroccan shores while a few blonde young men practice windsurfing as if that ocean was their own garden.

And each night [before I turn off the lights of my rented room] when a voice from the other side of the Gibraltar Strait whispers straight into my ear that the catch of the day was better than the day before and that a plate of dried dates is still waiting for me on the table, I can only wonder, as if the voice was still whispering inside my ear, that life down there [in the Maghreb] is also a gift from god.

“Inshallah” 

[is all I hear while I’m immersed in total darkness]

[in a rented room]

[in a land that is foreign because the wind blows like a jab in the stomach]

and all I can think about is if that table will be there the day I return to the place I call [home].

“Inshallah” 

[but what does that mean while I’m 

immersed in this foreign darkness?]

I can only wonder

• Author
• Recent Posts

Mehmet Amazigh

He was born in 1986 in the fishing town of Essaouira (also known as Mogador), in the Moroccan southwest. Most of his life he has worked in the local fishing industry of Essaouira. After finishing his Lycée studies, he emigrated to France and Spain where he worked in the agricultural sector for a few years before returning to his homeland. During his free time, besides walking through the old city (Medina) of Essaouira, he writes poetry and teaches some English and geography to the local children. Up until this point of his life, he has only shared his poetry orally amongst his working peers: fishermen and children.

Latest posts by Mehmet Amazigh (see all)

• GOSPEL FOR THE LIVING ONES - February 23, 2024
• I Can Only Wonder - June 30, 2021