‘I couldn’t rise up out of its fire
half-English
unlike Aunt Jamila’
Despite having been born in Pakistan she no longer feels a part of that culture and there is a sense of disorientation with regard to her nationality. She describes how her own mother respected and felt passionate about her Indian jewellery; reminders of her culture. Alvi states with great sadness how the jewellery her mother ‘cherished’ was stolen from the car.
The presents are ‘radiant’ in her wardrobe – a constant reminder of her heritage and it is with difficulty Alvi remember the journey to Britain. She pieces together fragments of her background from old ‘fifties’ photographs’ and attempts to visually recreate her birthplace. As she grows up there are constant references to her homeland with news reports of fighting. She is distanced from the events and can only imagine her aunts in their ‘shaded rooms’ Sight of a passing beggar or sweeper-girl has the power to visually transport her to India and for a moment she believes she is in Lahore at the famous Shalimar gardens; a person of no ‘fixed nationality’.
In ‘Hurricane Hits England’ by Grace Nichols them poet is reminded of her Jamaican origins by a hurricane that she experiences in England. The tropical intensity of the storm reminds her of those that she experienced in the Caribbean and brings her ‘closer to the landscape’. She lies awake and listens to the elements and for the first time feels as if the Caribbean has come to England. Its ‘dark ancestral spectre’ reminds her of where she originated.
In the second stanza Nichols mentions Oya and Shango, some of the gods of the people of West Africa. She appeals for them to visit her during the violence of the storm. She refers fondly to the hurricane as her ‘back home cousin’ and like a relative it is familiar to her. The poet finds it strange that this kind of tropical storm should visit England but is grateful that it has reminded her of her roots. She feels that like the trees she has been uprooted from her foundations and exclaims,
‘O why is my heart unchained?’
The storm has brought feelings out in her that were previously hidden and the hurricane releases her emotions, breaking ‘the frozen lake in me’. She makes the connection with the English landscape and her Guyana landscape finally realising the universality of the elements and,
‘That the earth is the earth is the earth.’
In ‘Presents from my aunts in Pakistan’ and ‘Hurricane Hits England’ both poets remember their roots. Alvi is reminded of her ancestry with the gifts that are sent from relatives and for Nichols it is a hurricane, which causes her to reflect on living in England and her roots in Guyana.
