I first met Safia Khan at an event at Northern Quarter in Huddersfield. The first thing I noticed was a calm kindness that surrounded her. When she climbed on stage, she was one of the best readers I’ve seen. Afterwards, she was engaging with every young writer in the venue. It was working with Safia Khan that taught me how to read my own poetry, and how to maintain both personality and professionalism on stage. Sure, we both dropped that façade when we saw Piers Morgan’s face on an advert at the train station, but at least we made it to the end of the event.
Khan is a poet and a doctor working in Public Health – that wonderful meld between the sciences and humanities. She has published widely. ‘Fresh Off the Boat’, our poem of the month, is taken from Khan’s 2022 collection Too Much Mirch, published by The Poetry Business. The poem was first published in an anthology called We’re All In It Together: Poems for a DisUnited Kingdom from the University of Huddersfield’s in-house publishers Grist Books in March 2022. This book also featured my first publication and, when I got my author copy, the editor told me a few key names to look out for in the book. Safia’s name was one of those. Naturally, I read those poets first. ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ stood out to me then. Revisiting it over 4 years later, it still stands out to me. Painfully, it’s also even more topical in the current British social and political climate.
There is an agony to this poem that I don’t feel qualified to speak on. I am not an immigrant, my life has never been endangered by war in my home country, displacement due to invasion, or by the cold journeys over the ocean to reach a place of safety and peace. Still, this poem conveys those agonies, and I am human and able to empathise. Note: empathise. Not understand. I can never truly understand the horror this poem conveys.
‘Fresh Off the Boat’ moves in three acts and three stanzas. The first details the journey from an unnamed country to another country, presumed to be the United Kingdom. The second stanza details the experience of the immigrant working a difficult job, facing racism, and experiencing abuse in employment due to immigration status – abuse that is widespread in Visa systems. The third stanza is the most heartbreaking. Here, the poem’s character is learning English and seeking comfort from his teacher, who has the ‘same name as his sister’ who froze to death in the ocean during their crossing.
His sister dies with ‘lungs… full of salt and ice’, but the poem’s character still ‘holds her limp body all night’. This image, so simple, shows us such distinct human pain. These two have travelled to try and find a place of safety. All they have found so far, instead, is death. Later, the two of them ‘sway in the van like cattle’. I love this multifaceted simile of ‘like cattle’. Cattle, of course, are living, breathing beings who experience pain and fear and joy and play. Just like people. Yet we rob these animals of identity, just as we dehumanise the immigrant. This image is twofold. The immigrant is compared to cattle - an insult in itself - and conjures the image of violent mistreatment associated with animals in the meat industry
In the second stanza, the character is working in a takeaway, ‘frying chicken / … for rowdy teens’ who ‘spit out his country on a list / of places the UK should invade’. The irony here, stated by the speaker, is that the UK has already invaded that nation… It likely even had a hand in the immigrant’s need to move abroad in the first place! That is the inevitable legacy of the coloniser. A ‘traffic light eye’ from the owner of the joint stops the young man from standing up from himself or his nation, as he fears his immigration status will be affected. Here, what stands out is a subtle examination of the abuse of the immigrant, their status and their needs used to force obedience and acceptance.
Finally, the young man asks for his teacher’s phone number because she has the ‘same name as his sister’. The teacher sets her boundaries, as a teacher has to. But it hurts here because this person is so alone. Not only that, but he is being taught the English language, and uses it here to express his feelings when he tells his teacher:
‘this country is cold and [her] voice
is like, and he points to the board,
blanket’
The ‘blanket’ here suggests comfort and warmth in another person, but is juxtaposed with the cold country. We see the loneliness, the pain, and the loss coming together in the simple use of a word. We see the need for connection that humans strive for. Hell, we see humanness. Khan herself taught English and, though the story here is mostly fictionalised, it is a collected tale of migrant struggle and people’s simple desire for home.
There is an earlier poem in the collection, called ‘Debbie’. At first, this was going to be our poem of the month, but my focus shifted from the moment I started writing. I want to mention ‘Debbie’, however, because she is the perfect antithesis of ‘Fresh Off the Boat’. She is an embodiment of blissful ignorance prevalent in so many people in the United Kingdom, the United States, and in other countries around the world that cosplay as superpowers. Debbie is a hairdresser, and she is ‘clearing the afternoon to attend a Brexit rally’ while also ‘closing the shutters to give her hijabis some privacy’.
Why do I raise this? Because often, we are encouraged to be tolerant and patient with people who are contradicting – people whose words state one thing, and actions state another. We often say, “I think their heart’s in the right place”. But now, in a world where human beings are vilified for being immigrants, or for having black or brown skin, or for their gender or sexuality, or for their faith, it is harder to simply accept that someone’s heart is in the right place. Their words and their actions must be in the right place, too.
Khan states, ‘This is Debbie’s world, we’re all just living in it’. Except it isn’t my world, or your world, or Debbie’s world, is it? It’s everyone’s. England is mine, and England belongs to the immigrants like the ones who inspired Khan to write ‘Fresh Off the Boat’. And England has a responsibility to its people, doesn’t it ? The people who were born here, and the people who search for a home here. A responsibility they are shunning on the streets of this country, and in the halls of the House of Commons.
Fresh Off the Boat
by Safia Khan
Not enough life jackets,
He gives the last one to his sister
who clutches his leg, his body a raft.
By the time he makes it to shore,
her lungs are full of salt and ice.
He holds her limp body all night
as they sway in the van like cattle.
At night he stands frying chicken
in the back of a shop for rowdy teens,
who spit out his country on a list
of places the UK should invade,
to the soundtrack of golden oil
splashing. He smirks. They’re so drunk
they don’t realise they already have.
His boss flashes a traffic light eye,
reminds him of his pending status.
When I teach the proper vocab
for clothing, his eyes are nets,
catching what swims at them,
his hands driftwood when he
holds out a phone, asks please
if I call him sometime. I can’t,
I’m only his teacher. He nods.
It’s just I have same name as his sister,
and this country is cold, and my voice
is like, and he points to the board,
blanket.
From Too Much Mirch by Safia Khan (2022)