The House - Warsan Shire

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Home is written by Warsan Shire. She receives Brunei University African Poetry Prize for this poetry.

Poetry

i


Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women; kitchen of lust,

bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy.

Sometimes the men - they come with keys,

and sometimes, the men - they come with hammers.


ii


Nin soo joog laga waayo, soo jiifso aa laga helaa,

I said Stop, I said No and he did not listen.


iii


Perhaps she has a plan, perhaps she takes him back to hers

only for him to wake up hours later in a bathtub full of ice,

with a dry mouth, looking down at his new, neat procedure.


iv


I point to my body and say Oh this old thing? No, I just slipped it on.

v


Are you going to eat that? I say to my mother, pointing to my father who is lying on the dining room table, his mouth stuffed with a red apple.


vi


The bigger my body is, the more locked rooms there are, the more men come with keys. Anwar didn’t push it all the way in, I still think about what he could have opened up inside of me. Basil came and hesitated at the door for three years. Johnny with the blue eyes came with a bag of tools he had used on other women: one hairpin, a bottle of bleach, a switchblade and a jar of Vaseline. Yusuf called out God’s name through the keyhole and no one answered. Some begged, some climbed the side of my body looking for a window, some said they were on their way and did not come.


vii


Show us on the doll where you were touched, they said.

I said I don’t look like a doll, I look like a house.

They said Show us on the house.

Like this: two fingers in the jam jar

Like this: an elbow in the bathwater

Like this: a hand in the drawer.

viii


I should tell you about my first love who found a trapdoor under my left breast nine years ago, fell in and hasn’t been seen since. Every

now and then I feel something crawling up my thigh. He should make himself known, I’d probably let him out. I hope he hasn’t

bumped in to the others, the missing boys from small towns, with pleasant mothers, who did bad things and got lost in the maze of

my hair. I treat them well enough, a slice of bread, if they’re lucky a piece of fruit. Except for Johnny with the blue eyes, who picked my locks and crawled in. Silly boy, chained to the basement of my fears, I play music to drown him out.


ix


Knock knock.

Who’s there?

No one.

x


At parties I point to my body and say This is where love comes to die. Welcome, come in, make yourself at home. Everyone laughs, they think I’m joking.

(Warsan Shire, 2014)[1]

Summary

This poetry is about the life of the refugee.

Author

In 2014, Shire was the new Young Poet Laureate of London, the first in the world. Born in Kenya to Somali parents, Shire grew up in London, where she always felt like an outsider, and embodies the kind of shape-shifting, culture-juggling spirit that lurks in most people who are unable to trace their ancestors to the founding fathers of their country, or whose ancestors look nothing like those fathers. Shire conjures up a new vocabulary for belonging and alienation in the limbo. In an interview, what she described as the "surrealism of everyday immigrant life," one day you're in your country, having fun, drinking mango juice, and the next day you're in the London Underground and your kids talk to you in a language that you don't understand. "

Racism Issue

After visiting a shelter for Somali refugees in London, Shire was inspired to write' Home'. Her poetry grapples with the harsh realities of life as a refugee, someone who, mostly because of conflict, has to leave his or her home and way of life in order to survive. Shire does not hesitate to record the true essence of becoming a refugee. She writes that, unless the water is better than the ground, no one puts their children in a boat, and refers to the traumatic and dehumanizing impact of leaving one's homeland and finding oneself in an unfriendly, foreign location. The poem, which is political to its heart, is dominated by a sense of dislocation and a lack of belonging. It is an urgent reminder of the reasons why refugees do what they feel they have to do to survive and secure their families, inspired by the horrific individual histories that formed part of the European refugee crisis.

Reference

  1. Shire, Warsan. 2014. Home. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved January 1 2020.
  2. Chandra, Sanya. August 2 2020. Understanding Refugees Through ‘Home’ by Warsan Shire. Retrieved January 1 2020.
    1. Shire, Warsan. "The House.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90733/the-house-57daba5625f32. Accessed 1 January 2021.