As an Anglo-American Muslim living in Spain, Medina Tenour Whiteman's work revolves around Muslim identity and expressions of faith in the West. Listen to her song "Echo the Divine" and read some of her poems below.
Echo the Divine (Lyrics):
Why does it always have to be
a choice between the apple and the tree
between the honey and the bee?
I get confused between the singer and the song
My heart's honey gets waylaid
Between the synapse and the tongue
Honey's sweeter when you've been stung
It ain't the wood that makes the sound so fine
an empty space vibrates
and echoes the Divine
it echoes the Divine
Fruits falls
but my tree
won't move
at all
No matter how quick
the taste fades from your lips
that fruit tree won't move at all
It ain't the wood that makes the sound so fine
an empty space vibrates
and echoes the Divine
it echoes the Divine
We lie between two fingers of
The Heart-Holder's hand
Swimming (a poem)
No wonder all the normal folk
have trouble understanding us,
our supra-cultural language, our
unapologetic style.
You need
eyes embedded in your heart,
a heart inside your head
to wade through endless
English butcherings of
elegant Arabic verse
– Shakespeare strangled into semaphore –
and what is more
you need gymnastic vision
to skip nimbly over words
prebranded in the childhood heat of
lava-fuelled Sunday schools
to rewrite their burdened meanings.
So pundits write opinions of us
praise and scorn by turns
like experts on the awe of swimming
who, however, never dare to dip their toes
into a lake or sea or blow-up paddling pool
for fear of getting wet.
It passed through in the milk, crossed
the placenta's lifeblood bridge
entered muscles, bones, capillaries
synaptic code message
heard it sung as I was rocked in
water where I could not drown
kept in perfect floating stasis
unbiased by up or down
learned the meaning of protection there
of never feeling fear
an anti-gravity encasement
warmed by nearness of the Near
had it rhythmically taught to me
in mother hadra dance
listened quietly as she sung it
in my almost-sleeping trance.
Now whatever questions pose themselves
like mirror-gawking girls
reflecting endlessly upon their looks
their freckles and their curls
there is something in my cells I
can’t disdain and can’t regret
there's remembrance in my body;
I can't physically forget.
