Blood

The poem “Blood” is set in America but refers to Palestine in the fourth stanza. America is “home” for the speaker, though there are hints her family is perceived as not entirely belonging there.

The fact that a girl in the neighborhood comes to the family home and asks to see “the Arab” (Line 9) indicates that Americans view Arabs as a curiosity at best and as hostile interlopers at worst. America has had a checkered relationship with Arabs since the September 11 attacks, when 19 militants associated with Islamic extremist group al Qaeda highjacked four airplanes and flew into targets, such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

At the same time, the first stanza indicates Arabs are admirable for qualities they possess, like being able to catch a fly in one’s hand.

“Home” is therefore a source of both solace and unease for the speaker. On the one hand, she can live relatively safely in America. Her family members are guests in American households. She has the luxury of driving into the countryside when she needs to think or regain equilibrium. The pleasantly mundane environment is in stark contrast to that of Palestine, where everyday life is defined by violence and chaos.

However, America can be both welcoming and threatening. There is a sense that America’s wars in the Middle East have spilled onto American soil, influencing American attitudes towards Arabs.

In addition, US policy has broadly supported Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which means Palestinians have not viewed the country as a credible peace-broker. The poet is half-Palestinian, so her loyalties are understandably divided: “What flag can we wave?” (Line 19). She chooses to wave the flag “of stone and seed, / table mat stitched in blue” (Lines 20-21).

The “stone and seed” referred to could symbolize Palestine itself, a harsh place that was previously fruitful and peaceful. The “table mat” is a symbol of domesticity, and blue is often viewed as the color of peace, so the speaker suggests her loyalty lies with peacemakers, those who keep families together and homes intact.

The Palestinian child in the fourth stanza, who could be either boy or girl, is a “[h]omeless fig” (Line 18), much as her father was when his family was displaced.

The notion of “homelessness” affects the speaker powerfully—her father was able to settle in America, acquiring an American identity, but so many Palestinians remain stateless. In fact, Palestinians form the largest stateless community in the world. This is a trauma that continues to affect Palestinian families no matter where they live.

Shihab Nye has a complex response to place, which emerges in many of her poems. She regards herself a citizen of the planet, someone for whom borders do not really exist. She has called herself a “wandering poet” because many of her poems reflect her own travels but also because she has written about experiences of migration and diaspora.

“We were always travelers in my family and being bicultural gave me an appetite for mixtures and for the world behind any given scene—it is always so large and there is always so much we have not imagined,” she said in an interview in 2010 (see Further Resources).

However, she acknowledges there is a difference between being free to travel anywhere—something afforded by her American identify—and being forced to travel because your home is no longer yours.

The poem “Blood” ably explores the cultural dislocation of living in America as the daughter of a Palestinian Arab refugee but also looks at the broader picture of Palestinian ethnic cleansing, which affects successive generations.