Grandmother’s Daff

If I were a seafarer, I would swallow

the raging port, sail through the gales

find the ocean's grief, spill in endless waves

 

I’d ride the crests and let my echoes ripple

through the generational storms

and call upon her gifted name, the halo of light- 

 

Ya Gedda my old best friend,

 

teach me how to decorate the face of the moon 

and dress in ancient embroidery and dance 

in our fine woven threads, clustered in Himyaritic 

 

Beatles -like dialects where we once weaved

the streets in the folds of your hennaed palms, 

soft as the pomegranate’s red aroma–

 

I’d sail through your wrinkled hands like 

an old map, to tell a story of a mosaic land 

and water, of a thousand melodies

 

I’d guard the gates of your music, so no shadow 

will steal our Sufi chants for I am the lover of the sea

 

searching for Sirius, the brightest star of them all,

who carries ancestry upon the people’s tongue 

and I’d build a ladder from my old tools—

 

hang the airglow rope and climb into space 

along the sun’s horizon and take

my golden instrument of her heart,

 

blow to the wrist and strike to the knee—

how I would plant a tree in the nightfall clouds

hear the Daff we once danced to,

 

each note, I laid my head in her velvet touch 

in a whispered lullaby, I’d cradle the ship 

across the Red Sea 

 

whose musk burns in the dark,

but don’t break the hollow shell skin, if the weight 

of my people’s sounds are heavy as the earth itself, 

 

Ya Gedda, I know not when my heart will cease to beat

but who will carry you when I am frayed and old?

 

Should I fall with the stars who have gone before me, 

if the sky is wide enough for who seeks a place to rest 

 

then I’d fold the world in a box like a Rubik’s cube

and fix the cold hearts that watch borders turn into cages, 

 

so I hide, sketching loved ones in the sky….

 

Daff is a traditional Arab frame drum with a distinct, high-pitched sound, often used in folk music and Sufi rituals, played by striking its skin or shaking it to produce rhythmic beats

 

In Arabic, "Gedda"  جدة means "grandmother".

​

Creative Team Credits
Composer, Michael Betteridge
Poet, Amina Atiq
Filmmaker, Luca Rudlin
Sound Engineer, Johnny Woodhead
Creative Producer, Holly Hunter