A Holiday of Choices

2023 7th & 8th Grade Poetry Honorable Mention

It was Eid day
The day I had been waiting for
My Christmas, My Hanukkah

The smell of feasts leaping through the air
Through the cracks and slits of doors
Through my nostrils
Sucked up and up
To meet its companion
The fantasy of my brain

Spicy chicken curry
Deep brown, cooked to perfection
With Grandmother’s soft hands
Chicken and beef biryani
With rice of all different colors
Like the leaves of autumn, a splendid sight to see
Sweet round, puffy rasgullas
Like puffer fish swimming through the airy syrupy mixture

My turquoise sharara dress
With its bright clear stones on the bodice
That caught my eye since the day I bought the dress
A light veil flying through the air
Dancing to its own rhythm
My pants, the best part of it all
Tight on the waist
Large and puffy near my rough ankles

This is the day I feel my most Bangladeshi
The day where I don’t have to be American
Don’t have to wear my large Gap shirts and black Old Navy tights
Don’t have to eat the same bland peanut butter and jelly sandwich everyday
No, this is where every ounce of American
Gets stored up in a jar
A small, round glass jar
So transparent, it camouflages
Into a deep, dark corner of my brain
Locked up until further notice

Yet this year, this Eid
Grandmother had given me a leather box
The brown leather old and rusted
Engraved with flowers and vines popping with color
A whimsy of forest green, indigo blue, and a deep purple
Somewhere in this forest of colors
A carved Zahara imprinted on the top
Glossy and bright with a golden hue
Somewhere in this forest of colors
A rusted lock glued onto the front of the box
Dust covering the edges of the lock

I lunged towards it, seeing my name
The letters glinting in the sunlight
Like I was that one shining force
Adorned by blazing beauty
In a sea of black nothingness

I opened the box, the round lock sealed shut
After I tugged and tugged on it
Like a door
Forced open
The golden knob scratched and turned silver

I found a picture
Young, sweet Grandmother
Mom as a child, looking down
With her pigtails rolling in embarrassment
My aunts pulling at Grandmother’s hair
Laughing hysterically, jumping up and down on the creaking bed

Most importantly,
A gleaming Bangladeshi flag on the wall
Enveloped in darkness with a large dot on the center
Though it was black and white
I still felt its immense power

“I wanted you to have this, Zahara.
I wanted you to remember who you are.”
Grandmother smiled and went back to the kitchen
To make parathas

Suddenly
I opened that jar of American
Stored deep down in the corner of my brain
A jar with my birthplace, the emblem of my soul
And I held the box of blazing Bangladesh
Where my family comes from, with the culture I adore

And I didn’t know what to choose