Episode Four: Amina Atiq Transcript

Amina Atiq  0:04  

*speaking in Arabic*

My name is Amina Atiq.

I live in Liverpool.

Joe Fenn  0:17  

Welcome to the Portico Podcast. This is Rewriting the North, a celebration of place and writing in the north of England.

Amina Atiq  0:27  

I am a writer. My heritage is Yemeni. Heritage is a big part of my work. I came here when I was four years of age, so Liverpool has been a part of my childhood but also most of my upbringing. I'm at Lawrence Road, Wavertree, Liverpool, and I'm looking at number 21. What used to be my granddad's corner shop in the 60s. I spent my first 10 years living on top of the corner shop. So just looking at the window. On the second right would be my bedroom. So the street became kind of like my day to day watching people pass by shops open up. 

Place is really important to my writing and I think as a writer, I held on to these places because no one else did. So this place is important. It's important to my family. It's also important to a lot of Yemeni people that emigrated to the UK, and set up corner shops across the city. 

And then on the side of the roads used to be the street where we used to play with my friend Chantel. She was like, first friend I made. One of the most rebel things we used to do is play in the alleyway. People used to associate the alleyways where the bins were, but that was like our playground. But I think that a lot of Yemeni people in the city can can really recognise that because a lot of Yemeni families lived on top of the newsagent. And we don't talk about the fact that we don't have gardens. You know, where do we play? Where does the child learn to play? The alleyway was ours. And in this piece, I talk a lot about the alleyway. It's titled L8 Streets Die With Me. 

L8 Streets Die with Me 

The old city sky was a smug, summer

Outside St Georges Hall steps, facing St Johns Market 

in a late 90’s Kodak disposable half 

perfect shot caught between my mother’s

finger 

She counts. ‘wahd ithnain thalata’

We smile hard, 

I am in tight ponytails and a straight fringe

that laid under the iron board  

I bit my tongue, pulling on my new adult teeth 

washed-out jeans and two golden buttons

misplaced, my small size 4 feet

one heavy arm over my younger brother

and his cheap haircut with a paper scissors

‘I got you here, little bro’.

 I hear a twang of scouse, unsettled-

when did I invite her here?

This Liverpool foreign bricks carry

 our young'un, but cry me a Mersey River 

these Journeys take us elsewhere

because this my mouth weaved Arab

the land is wild, she fed me with her fingers

red-spiced henna, cardamom leaves 

my skin is her yellow, pink and brown 

blemishes and burn. 

binding alif ba ta

as I learn my first letters of the Arabic alphabet 

but she laughed right into our faces 

drowning in a utopia, we are Liverpool they said, 

We are Liverpool they said.

what about my father’s father, and his father, 

my mother’s mother, and her mother

2)So I look around this city sweet-cold

My mother drops her camera to her waist 

I hear that she sings a Yemeni folktale

between her teeth. She really trusts that her tribe

will return.  I felt it in my bones a new home

was born. 

3) A gran-dad 

sailing through the 60’s Mersey 

burning newsagents in the midst of a Toxteth riot 

South shields in a secret English marriage

kissing a future behind the alley-way

a Welsh dream, language becomes three

we are everywhere, in a half perfect shot 

in someone else’s camera. 

So I saw gran-dad in the city, when it sleeps

And when my father whispered the other home

I see you in his eyes, kissing  Liverpool   

streets goodbye. This Yemen moon is on the tip of our fingertips.

I follow the village bedsit with no legs

And you hold your chest and my child father 

arms around you, he learns to grieve for the first time.

It's not a corner shop, it doesn't sell broken biscuits anymore. Your bread or your milk. Every time I walk past it, I could still see parts of my childhood somewhere in it. And it hasn't dramatically changed. And my granddad's life ended quite quickly. It didn't last very long in the UK. So I think this is part of his legacy, to say I did exist. We're now heading to Lodge Lane, which is the famous road that is known for many migrant communities, including the Yemeni community Somali, Iraqi, Kurdish, Ethiopian and so much more.

I blew the candles of sixteen years

caught between the family camcorder

this half, perfect shot 

on the archers’ rooftops

over the brick walls of Granby 

painting the walls of Lodge Lane

skipped through Lawrence Road

walk day through Warrington, 

mum dressed us in our best 

white puffy dresses 

white ribbons, brother in a black suit smart, red tie 

for a Jubilee birthday. 

But the world stopped when my father found 

my walls inked in my teenage poems 

‘You promised me that this new home is all mine, 

but who am I if I am afraid with my fist ready

behind school bus stops, running on 

double decker busses from white boys 

and their racist slurs 

We sang anthems, shoulder to shoulder 

to the same patriotic flag that scares you, turns your stomach-

so cry me a Mersey river, this L8 dies with me 

My mother sees it in my eyes, the burning anger 

she blames herself

so she rocks a tribal lullaby between 

her Yemeni teeth 

reminiscing her teenage years 

caught between a migration-love story

to an 80’s, late teenage young man from Liverpool 

{my father}.

He set eyes on home for the first time

where he found my mother, black pearl eyes, golden hair and beauty spot on her right cheek-

It was under the shabby perfect-shade, 

So he runs down the stairs, to tell gran-ma

‘Mum, I found the village girl, on the balcony floor, she is the love of my life’.

Gran-ma lights up- dreamt the day her scouse boy falls in love with home. 

And he spent weeks looking for the girl on the balcony, 

her father, a wealthy business man hears the news 

‘This British boy from London wants my daughter’

So my father spent months, convincing that he is worthy so they agreed. 

She walked through the alleyway after mid-day prayer, 

as the village sleeps

where they would catch each other’s eyes.

So I sat up on my bed and said, mum tell me more…

‘Your father was confident, head on his shoulders

a leather jacket in a Malahi heatwave- he confused me, with his winter blues 

his face would blush’ 

this, my daughter, is where the city meets the village

in a half, perfect shot

So I'm here at Lodge Lane. And this road is it's iconic to the city. Firstly, because it is the home of businesses to so many migrant communities across the city, including the Yemeni community. This is where I would go and pick up kind of like the smells and foods of Yemen. I think it somewhat connects us to our homes. The history of Yemeni people in Liverpool dates back to before World War One. Many academics say that the first Yemeni people to arrive were sailors, but in particular, the Yemeni community in Liverpool came after World War Two. Many had set up businesses, newsagents, you had the famous Yemeni milkman as well. Many of them came from tribes or villages where education wasn't a priority. So you know, being a shop owner, you don't really have to communicate in English. It was just hand gestures and hard work. As well as celebrating Lodge Lane, and its business entrepreneurship that has brought communities together by selling our favourite foods and smells and cardamom leaves and saffron leaves, I mean, the list can go on. There's also a past that lives here that affected and still affects the community. And that was the Toxteth riots. You know, it was it was a it was a boiling point for the whole country. Black and brown communities were fed up with how they were treated, how they were marginalised. And it was just a boiling point for it to happen and that's what Toxteth Riot was, it was a wake up call to say enough is enough. People don't ever associate Lodge Lane with Toxteth Riots and I know that one Yemeni shop which is called Spendwell today actually was set up on fire. And there's another shop called Mars where the bottom of the shop was set on fire and the father had to run upstairs to grab his his child. And I feel like in that narrative, the Yemeni community were never included. They weren't included in the narrative of the Toxteth Riots. 

2) I am a summer-child 

we came in flogs, running the hardomout water

between our fingers 

we catch the mountain’s 

highest peak, Bani Matari in all of me 

in fog between our palms, 

a silent prayer in a san3ani spirit

young, elevating a jagged peak

a Yemenite neighbour stands tall 

you can run with me

a waterfall between her face

this is all ours- 

did you see her coast

a life in the Mediterranean oceans finding the fishermen and 

the little boy whose heart beats to the strength 

in his arm-length back. 

Did you see the British Crowned who marked their bodies 

leaving blood, cradling their sheep coats 

numbered in threes, 

where is mother, where is mother 

where is land, where is land 

when it catches you

In the past that is blind. And a future that was unknown in bleakness. 

So we looked for clues. But this road starts here and ends nowhere- 

because my summer child is a lost friend 

I often called, a talk-home card 

dial 974 but she no longer recognizes me

because when you have taken parts of Yemen with you

Then I am the Bedouin, a Qahtani 

roaming between borders before they 

separated us

I am dry cherries, drinking poetry from a glass 

painting the edges of the land with the tip 

of my soles 

But my child summer is a lost friend

I no longer recognise

But sometimes I do. 

I see you, when my women carry home 

fluttering their tongues, and wailing in their terrace living rooms

neon lights spinning, their feet touch twice and swinging their garments 

ring-shaped, holding hands 

these women, is my mother painting a world in my three-year old child

watch my eyes twitch,

‘I am not like you, mum’ 

I dance like you, I move my tongue like yours

but I move differently, always a step behind

I move my mouth differently always a step behind 

These walls come down in wounds we don’t speak of

Your child village is not mine, 

But who are we when we are together

when this city is sweet- cold

and my sky is political and it is raging, it is raging 

cry me a Mersey River because this journey took us elsewhere 

I sat with my grandmother a few years back and I said, "Gran, I want to record you singing a old way of a folk tale. It was her way of calling out and singing out to her Yemen.

Amina’s Grandmother:

*singing in Arabic*

Amina Atiq  17:40  

I think I'm doing what my grandmother's doing in my poem. She's calling out for her Yemen, and I'm calling up for mine but they both look quite different. My one is a little bit more mixed… with a Scouse accent. A dual identity. Bilingual. My grandmother's is a 60s young woman who came to Liverpool for the first time, but never really picked up the Scouse accent. 

but who am I, when I come 

with one broken body, painting a revolution with the tip of my fingers of a long-lost long-lost home. This is an unkind drought love story. A heartbreaker Scouser. A backstabber. 

I am backstabber to my country. I, I am a fake dressed like you. 

because some days I parade the British streets

half-bullet-proof,

of a child of a starved diaspora 

letter-box burka

a threatened hijab in a French high court

I am the Brexit antagonist 

can you see me in a censored poem

airport checks, insulting my mother’s tribal name

vigilant on the underground tube, not too close 

she stands behind the crowd- 

I am not a Muslim doctor in a pandemic

and maybe there is a miracle to save us all,

but I am a poet who gardens, do you still need me here?

This is just a half, of a perfect shot 

Amina’s Grandmother  

*singing in Arabic*

Joe Fenn  20:01  

That was a new commission from poet and activist Amina Atiq in Liverpool. And I'm Joe Fenn, speaking to you from the historic Portico Library in Manchester, home of Northern England's biggest literary award, the Portico Prize, a celebration of place and writing in the north of England. We can't wait to announce the winner of the Portico Prize 2022 on Thursday 20th January. Follow #PorticoPrize to see the announcement. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes and tell your family and friends about it. The Portico Library is a registered charity. You can find out more about our work at www.theportico.org.uk. The Portico Podcast is funded by Arts Council England. The producer is Nija Dalal-Small. Concept and programming by Sarah Hill with special thanks to Dr. David Cooper. Join us next time.