Foreigner’s Etiquette
Silhouettes of olive branches darken
the pale walls in a tavern along the mountain
she sits with a glass of arak,
liquor, water, ice cubes mixed together
the only customer in this village restaurant
A belly dancer shakes her hips at the woman,
colourful beads sway around her waist;
the dancer drops a veil down the woman’s back,
pulls it around her shoulders
It tickles the nape of her neck
she turns from the dancer’s swinging breasts,
her cheeks redden as she looks down at her plate
the stuffed grape leaves, taboulleh, hommus
maza served before the roast leg of lamb
She doesn’t know how to say
I don’t eat meat in Arabic.
~ Sonia Saikaley
Sonia Saikaley lives in Ottawa, where she writes amidst the chaos and joy of everyday life. Her work has appeared in Urban Graffiti, Black Cat 115, Zygote, the anthology Burning Ambitions, FreeFall, Bywords.ca and Bywords Quarterly Journal. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers.
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