Nkechi Ebubedike, Cloud Collage VI (detail), featured in AGNI 104
On a bench
by One World Trade Center,
I told another exile:
I kissed an Uzbek,
drove from Manhattan to Queens,
passed the Halal stores in Astoria,
and was offered a night for another life.
I love how we give in NYC,
in other words, how we ask,
but hell, we are safer here after all
than between bombs.
I waited for my hunger
to vanish
to ask my only love
to crash on my neckbone,
but he didn’t understand
I wanted to be touched,
rent a sailboat, play John Legend,
read Yusef Komunyakaa, eat a bagel.
That’s how I bear the handkerchief
my father gave me before I left—
the only love he had left.
We all find ways to stay alive.
The words of the old lady
entering St. George Chapel
in Manhattan returned to me:
Don’t worry, habibti. Nothing is the end.
__________
St. George’s Syrian Catholic Church, 103 Washington Street, served the Melkite community. It later became Moran’s Ale House & Grill, which closed in 2011. Its landmarked façade remains one of the last traces of Little Syria.
Nathalie Handal
Nathalie Handal is described by Claire Messud as a “contemporary Orpheus.” She has lived on four continents and is the author of more than ten books, translated into over fifteen languages, including Roma Roam (Barrow Street Press, 2026) and Life in a Country Album (Pitt Poetry Series, 2019), winner of the Palestine Book Award. She is a professor at New York University Abu Dhabi and writes the column “The City and the Writer” for Words Without Borders. (updated 10/2026)