By Najla Elmachtoub
This piece has been selected by our editors to be nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize.
“Bokra1, I will visit my brother in America,”
you tell me, more like a fact than a desire.
Every exhale of your cigarette affirms this belief
and kisses my nose with our family scent:
farm-soil-sweat and tobacco.
You’re talking about my father,
your smoke-coated throat unmasking
the longing in your voice, reminding me
that long before he was my baba,
he was someone else’s little brother—
begging to join football games
on the schoolyard’s concrete court
fighting over the last cheese manousheh
forging alliances with neighbor-cousins
To play hide-and-seek—and later,
hide-the-beer and seek-her-attention—
Until one day, he tells you,
“Bokra, I’m leaving for America.”
Half a century later, the ocean between you
echoes the difference between those bokras:
My father’s—an expression of agency
and yours—quietly hopeful, but not expectant.
The first time they raided the village,
the planes filled the void between the mountains
with a reverberation so alien
that even the pine trees flinched.
You embraced the unfamiliar feel of a gun
harder than the stone that holds your land
and heavier than your brother’s goodbye.
Just another thing you had to do:
like working the farm at the crack of dawn
or walking your siblings to school.
Your grip tightened on the barrel
with the duty of a first-born
to protect what was left behind.
At least my brother is safe in America.
An ocean away, your brother collects his tips.
“Don’t spend it all in one place,” the manager insists
with a bright white grin and sandy hair.
He smiles like he’s accepting a favor,
just the way the others told him to.
Always show gratitude in America.
A harvest of money greater than he’s ever seen,
green, crisp, and stable like the sun.
He learns their names: Ben and George and Andrew
the paper saints of his empire—
growing more slowly than he will let on—
that accompany him each night in his car
when he counts his blessings in broken English—
his brother among them—
and falls asleep to the silence of a parking lot,
aching for the familiar sounds of village chaos.
But tomorrow will be a new day.
When does a stack of money become a life?
What will be enough in America?
Growing up in America,
I still come to visit you all the time
to piece together my own version of your story,
distinct from the ones my father tells me.
Your home blooms open to me
like the roses on our farm where we roam
past the olive trees and cactus bushes,
fingers sticky from overripe peaches.
We talk about how you used to be a poet,
and you insist I take a drag
as I let you know that my dad is more into cigars.
Suddenly, the sky breaks its silence with a sonic boom
that shifts the soil beneath our feet
and awakens the dogs from midday slumber.
You are unmoved,
a pillar of this land
and of this family.
But through and through
I am my father’s daughter—
taking every advantage
to survive this liminal life we inherited,
including the empire he built me.
One day, the words surprise even me:
“Baba, I am leaving America.”
I carry his torch of familial fracture,
but it didn’t start with me
Don’t worry, it’s not forever
and it didn’t start with him
Bokra we will all be together
but this is the way it has to be.
Bokra
Bokra bokra bokra
Inshallah
1 Bokra is a transliteration from Levantine Arabic that can mean either “tomorrow” or “in the near future”. Its exact meaning depends on context, but it can also remain deliberately ambiguous.
Najla is a Lebanese-American writer, engineering leader, and coach based in Berlin. Her work currently explores themes of ancestral healing, displacement, and cultural identity. (sun: libra, moon: sagittarius, rising: leo)
A Curious Moon 