Banah El Ghadbanah

Syrena in Space Banah El Ghadbanah

Winner of the Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize

LA SYRENA. For me home is in the water. When I go to the sea I want to swim forever and never look back. But I know I would die and the earth needs me on shore. My home is Syria and Syria for me is like the sea. I want nothing more than to jump in and swim around forever. In Syria I am declared wanted, like so many of us displaced lunar divas. The longing I feel is the deepest kind. It could crack the whole earth open. I am a Lumerian from Ancient Sumeria, a southern space creature in a northern world, LA SYRNENA, zhe is my destiny.


To be queer and syrienne and femme is like being a mermaid in space. You are doubly displaced-both from the water and from the land. You come from the ancient waters of another planet, and you float among the stars, searching for a place to call home. On your journey you meet other displaced lunar beings and they remind you of your ancestors. Together you form satellite cartographies, you become a dance of ancestral water and the lush starry landscape where possibility lives.


In this collection, each poem flows like water on the page. The author weaves in stories mantras revolutionary messages the movement of arabic letters the memory of Sumerian cuneiform. This book is a hybrid creature between poem-story-form that crosses genres like it crosses dimensions. In this work, you are the mermaid. You are the forever migrant, a traveler between the oceanic and the extraterrestrial, across continents and planets. You are a time traveler, and you speak many languages. You are LA SYRENA, conjuring your own space to feel free.