Writing Homework Help

Long Overdue

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Poets like Naomi Shihab Nye devote their lives to using words to communicate their feelings and ideas, yet when Shihab Nye, whose father was Palestinian, encountered anti-Arab prejudice, she was unable to disclose her Arab roots and to respond. In the excerpt that follows, Shihab Nye explores her silence.

The words we didn’t say. How many times? Stones stuck in the throat. Endlessly revised silence. What was wrong with me? How could I, a person whose entire vocation has been dedicated one way or another to the use of words, lose words completely when I needed them? Where does vocal paralysis come from? Why does regret have such a long life span? My favorite poet, William Stafford, used to say, “Think of something you said. Now write what you wish you had said.”

But I am always thinking of the times I said nothing.

In England, attending a play by myself, I was happy when the elderly woman next to me began speaking at intermission. Our arms had been touching lightly on the armrest between our seats.

“Smashingly talented,” she said of Ben Kingsley, whose brilliant monologue we’d been watching. “I don’t know how he does it—transporting us so effortlessly; he’s a genius. Not many in the world like him.” I agreed. But then she sighed and made an odd turn. “You know what’s wrong with the world today? It’s Arabs. I blame it all on the Arabs. Most world problems can really be traced to them.”

My blood froze. Why was she saying this? The play wasn’t about Arabs. Ben Kingsley was hardly your blue-blooded Englishman, either, so what brought it up? Nothing terrible about Arabs had happened lately in the news. I wasn’t wearing a keffiyeh [traditional Arab headdress] around my neck.

But my mouth would not open.

“Why did so many of them come to England?” she continued, muttering as if she were sharing a confidence. “A ruination, that’s what it is.”

It struck me that she might be a landlady having trouble with tenants. I tried and tried to part my lips. Where is the end of the tangled thread? How will we roll it into a ball if we can’t find an end?

She chatted on about something less consequential, never seeming to mind our utterly one-sided conversation, till the lights went down. Of course, I couldn’t concentrate on the rest of the play. My precious ticket felt wasted. I twisted my icy hands together while my cheeks burned.

Even worse, she and I rode the same train afterwards. I had plenty of time to respond, to find a vocabulary for prejudice and fear. The dark night buildings flew by. I could have said, “Madam, I am half Arab. I pray your heart grows larger someday.” I could have sent her off, stunned and embarrassed, into the dark.

My father would say, “People like that can’t be embarrassed.”

But what would he say back to her?

Oh I was ashamed for my silence and I have carried that shame across oceans, through the summer when it never rained, in my secret pocket, till now. I will never feel better about it. Like my reckless angry last words to the one who took his own life.

Years later, my son and I were sitting on an American island with a dear friend, the only African American living among 80 or so residents. A brilliant artist and poet in his seventies, he has made a beautiful lifetime of painting picture books, celebrating expression, encouraging the human spirit, reciting poems of other African American heroes, delighting children and adults alike.

We had spent a peaceful day riding bicycles, visiting the few students at the schoolhouse, picking up rounded stones on the beach, digging peat moss in the woods. We had sung hymns together in our resonant little church. Our friend had purchased a live lobster down at the dock for supper. My son and I were sad when it seemed to be knocking on the lid of the pot of boiling water. “Let me out.” We vowed quietly to one another never to eat a lobster again.

After dinner, a friend of our friend dropped in, returned to the island from her traveling life as an anthropologist. We asked if she had heard anything about the elections in Israel—that was the day Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu vied for prime minister and we had been unable to pick up a final tally on the radio.

She thought Netanyahu had won. The election was very close. But then she said, “Good thing! He’ll put those Arabs in their places. Arabs want more than they deserve.”

My face froze. Was it possible I had heard correctly? An anthropologist speaking. Not a teenager, not a blithering idiot. I didn’t speak another word during her visit. I wanted to. I should have, but I couldn’t. My plate littered with red shells.

After she left, my friend put his gentle hand on my shoulder. He said simply, “Now you know a little more what it feels like to be black.”

So what happens to my words when the going gets rough? In a world where certain equalities for human beings seem long, long, long, overdue, where is the magic sentence to act as a tool? Where is the hoe, the tiller, the rake?

Pontificating, proving, proselytizing leave me cold. So do endless political debates over coffee after dinner. I can’t listen to talk radio, drowning in jabber.

The poetic impulse—to suggest, hint, shape a little picture, to find a story, metaphor, scene—abides as a kind of music inside. Nor can I forget the journalist in Dubai who called me donkey for talking about vegetables when there was injustice in the world.

I can talk about sumac, too. When a friend asks what’s that purple spice in the little shake-up jar at the Persian restaurant, tears cloud my eyes.

Is it good for you?

Are vegetables, in some indelible way, smarter than we are? Are animals?

But then the headlines take the power. The fanatical behavior.

“Problem is, we can’t hear the voices of the moderates,” said the Israeli man, who assured me his house was built on a spot where Arabs had never lived. “Where are they? Why don’t they speak louder?”

(They don’t like to raise their voices.)

(Maybe they can’t hear you either.)

Reflection Questions

1. Explain Shihab Nye’s various uses of words in the first paragraph. Why are words important? How do we use them to act passively or actively?
2. Why is Shihab Nye’s use of the word vocation significant? She didn’t write employment or job. Why is her diction important?
3. What are the various emotions Shihab Nye endures throughout her experiences with people lambasting Arabs? How does she deal with fear, anger, or embarrassment?
4. How are names and labels important in the various circumstances in this story? What larger significance do they have?