Washing My Father

Something I have realized in this class is that one element that draws me into poetry is my ability to immediately connect it to my personal life. The first time I read "Washing My Father" by Hayan Charara, I started out feeling sad for the man who had to watch his father's demise and I was caught up in the similarities to my life.

I washed where
he could barely reach.

When he was ready,
I filled a jug with the bath water
he sat in, poured it over
the nape of his neck,
over his shoulders,

Then lines six and seven of the last stanza jolted me,

I was ten years old.
He was a young man.

These lines caused me to read the poem a second and a third time -- I would have anyway, but I did it immediately because I felt I had missed something. I wondered if the boy was being abused. My additional readings put me at ease regarding sexual abuse because it was clear that the father was not allowing the boy to see his penis. The first lines of the poem read,

His cupped hands hid the space
between his legs.

and later, Charara writes,

...Gently,
I locked the door behind me,
his back still turned away,

So even as the father drys himself, we know the ten year old boy is not in the room. We know he is not forced to watch or to see his father's genital area. And even after my logical mind tells me that this poem is not about sexual abuse, I am still unnerved. I wonder if the speaker in the poem is traumatized by this experience of having to bathe his father.

I did some research to see if maybe this is a cultural expectation or understanding that young boys bathe their fathers as a rite of passage, but I could not confirm (or deny) this, but after sitting with the poem, I was able to find lines that gave me a clearer understanding of their relationship.

In the first two lines of the last stanza,

This is not about pity.
I did not yet know that kind of love.

I found it interesting that Charara calls pity a kind of love, but I can relate to it. I've been there -- that place where you are so sorry for someone that your love for them bleeds into your pity for them. Charara uses the first two stanzas of his narrative to show us the setting and invite us to watch a son caring for his father. [I must interject here how the words "washing" and "watching" are so close in sound and in look that they could almost be interchangeable -- kinda creeps me out further.] Then, in those last lines, we are left just as confused by this interaction as the speaker,

Plain and simple,
my father made me.
It is what he did.
He never required a reason,
and nobody ever asked why.

We too want to know why, but have no way to ask or to know.

That last line does make me wonder who else knows of this bathing. Is the speaker the only child? Is he the only one able to bathe the father or the only one the father trusts to bathe him? Is it an honor like washing the feet of your guru?

One could argue that there is still an element of abuse here -- a ten-year old boy being forced to bathe is able bodied (as far as we know) father and not being told why could be seen as abusive. Again, knowing more about the culture and family obligations/expectations would be helpful here.

The form Charara selects is free verse with three stanzas 16 lines, 12 lines and 12 lines. His line breaks are extraordinary throughout, but in the first stanza, they are exquisite. He chooses short lines with powerful images. Starting with the father and his cupped hands. The description of the silence in the bathroom in relation to the father's breathing and the steam and the droplets from the faucet is provocative and powerful. I am there, watching this washing and, like the speaker, wondering.


peacelovelight
Kiala