La Syrena: Visions of a Syrian Mermaid from Space

By 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 و mantras و revolutionary messages و the movement of arabic letters و 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dzanc Books
• Release date: Aug 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781950539796

Banah el Ghadbanah

Banah is an extraterrestial from Syria raised in the u.s. south. Zhe is a soothsayer, a sheikha-in-training, a mermaid from space. Banah is wanted by the Syrian regime for 50 million lira for telling their family’s story of exile and resistance. Zhe has a PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego, and writes about Syrian women’s poetics in revolution, siege, and diaspora.

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guide to the goddesses

abuk: the first woman, South Sudanese goddess of rain and patron goddess of abundance in the Dinka tradition, who went behind her father god’s back to plant grains for her people so that there might be abundance in the land.

aya:Akkadian goddess of the dawn. Goddess of sexual love, youth, the bride. Also means sign in Islam, proof of God’s love.

al ashel:West Arabian peninsula god whose name means One with the Bluish Black Eyes.

ālihah:in pre-Islamic times, these were supernatural daughters of the Creator-god Allāh. These spirits were closer to the goddesses than the jinn, the Mala’ikah (angels), the shayatin (wayward spirits), and the arwah (everyday spirits); they were tasked with intercepting in the order of things after Allah set the universe into motion and left earth to pursue other projects.

al jabr: means reunion of broken parts. Arabic root word behind algebra.

allat or al-lāt: the earth goddess of Mecca. She is one of the three daughters (along with Uzzat and Manat) of the high creator god Allah. She is responsible for fertility and soil quality from the Arabian Peninsula to Syria. Farmers would go on a pilgrimage to honor her. She protects spirits of the dead who live in the soil and underworld, and in her presence no animal could be killed, no human blood could be shed, and no tree could be cut down.

anahita:Iranian river goddess who watches over the Armenian lands, the Anatolian lands, the universe. She sends down the rain, sending waters from the heavens into springs and rivers, (210) according to the Iranian Yast (hymn) from 400 CE; it is she who is tasked with watching over the universe.

antum:Babylonian earth goddess, fertility goddess.

anunitu: early Babylonian goddess of the moon. She is the mother of Enlil, worshipped at her temple in Simpar until the sixth century BCE. She later became worshipped as Ishtar.

araxie:Armenian river goddess from the river Arax whose waters carry the magical power of inciting deep poetic expression.

aruru:Babylonian goddess of nature, she who created humanity in consort with Enki.

asherah: according to Ugarit tablets of 1400 BCE, she was also known as Athirat, earth mother. Asherah is She Who Builds, who gave people the clay of the earth and taught humans how to build shelters and shrines. Asherah is also She Who Walks in the Sea and protects all ships set out to sail.

astarte:the goddess descended to earth as a fiery star that landed at the lake in Aphaca near Byblos. Worship of Astarte happened from 9000 BCE to 300 CE. She is like Ishtar and Qadesh, the light of Venus, the eye of Heaven.

asushunamir: an ancient spirit who helped Ishtar become resurrected from the land of no return, a nonbinary spirit who was born both and neither man and woman in the Sumerian cosmology.

atargatis: chief mermaid goddess of northern Aleppo. A woman who does not know her own power. She accidentally kills her lover while making love to him. Out of shame, she throws herself into a lake, but she does not die. The goddesses give her a tail and the ability to survive on water and land; her grief transforms her into a new kind of being.

ba’alat-sahra: north Arabian goddess of the underworld and the desert, a goddess of the nomadic Semites; known to the Amorite tribe of southern Syria as Belet-Seri.

dilmun: an island paradise filled with divine waters, a garden of the goddesses where Ninhursag tends to her plants, temporary relief from the great flood in the epic of Gilgamesh.

enheduanna:high priestess of Inanna, the first woman poetess to sign her name. Born in 2286 BCE, she lived in the Sumerian city state Ur.

enki:Sumerian god of waters, lord of the abyss, a father god.

ereshkigal:Sumerian goddess of the underworld and Queen of the Dead, who keeps Inanna in the underworld and does not let her free.

gula:the Babylonian goddess of supreme healing, who knows how to stitch wounds back together again.

hekat: first known by her Nubian name Heqit, an amphibian being who swims in the water and walks on the land, holy enchantress, who guides transformations. Those who speak her names under moonlight with amulets of leather, papyruses, stone and wood, marked with words of power (pages 207-208 of Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood).

išhara:goddess of passion, love, an ancient deity from Northern Syria. The essence of a Scorpio. As a Hittite goddess, protected oaths and promises.

ishtar:where do I begin? Ishtar is the Assyro-Babylonian goddess of love and war. She enforced divine justice. Associated with the planet Venus and the eight-pointed star.

kurgarra:nonbinary star beings who save the goddess Inanna’s life when she is in the Land of No Return.

lama: Sumerian goddess of intercession whose name means protective spirit.

mamitu:Akkadian goddess of fate and destiny. She protects the sanctity of the truth.

marid:the name for pre-Islamic Arabian aquatic jinn. These spirits are wanderers who inhabit bodies of fresh and salt water and can dangerously seduce humans into their depths.

medusa:an African serpent goddess who comes from the caves of Libya.

miranda: a tempestuous past has left Miranda, the moon of Saturn, disfigured. She has a jumbled mass of geological scar tissue gouged by concentric canyons twelve miles deep. It could be that these are marks of the moon stitched and re-stitched back together by gravity after up to five shattering impacts. From the book Universe: A Definitive Visual Guide.

nammu: Sumerian ocean goddess, sacred primordial mother to all the gods and goddesses who provided the energetic template for humans to come into existence. When her son Enki was fast asleep in the subterranean waters, she awakened him and asked him to create humans. She gathered the tears of the other gods and brought them to her son, and said, Are you really lying there asleep? Please apply your wisdom and create a substitute for the gods so that they can be freed from their toil! The creature you planned will really come into existence. Impose on her the work of carrying baskets. You should knead clay from the top of the abzu; the birth-goddesses will nip off the clay and you shall bring the form into existence.

nanaya:Mesopotamian goddess of voluptuousness and sensuality. She was the great goddess of the entire earth, according to the Syriac Martyr Legend of Mār Muˁain.

nansha: comforter of orphans, caretaker of the elderly and the ill, shelterer of the homeless, the lonely, and feeder of the hungry, goddess of social justice. From the Lagash region in Iraq. Daughter of Ninhursag and Enki. She protects the Persian Gulf and its critters. From the hymn of Nanshe. She was also called Sirara.

nidaba:the Sumerian goddess of writing and astrology, scribe. According to the Dreams of Gudea, she holds a gold stylus and a clay tablet onto which the starry heaven was depicted. Curious and creative, the goddess of literacy, the written word, communication.

ninhursag: earth mother, queen of the cosmic mountain and queen who gives birth (Encyclopedia of Ancient Deities). As Enki’s partner, she became the mother of Ninmu, the plant goddess, the grandmother of Ninkurru, and the great grandmother of Uttu, the goddess of weaving. She is also worshipped under the name Ninlil. She created eight healing goddesses to heal the eight areas of disease in Enki.

ninkarrak: goddess of healing and provider of healing herbs. The Lady who makes the broken up whole again. Given the incantation belet balati, Lady of Health. She also the queen of rage who can make the earth quake.

ninkasi: the Sumerian goddess of dreams, healing magic, herbs, beer, and meditation. Her symbols are lions, fish, and serpents. One of Ninhursag’s eight daughters, she is created to cure Enki’s eight diseases in Assyro-Babylo-nian mythology. Patron goddess of the city of Ninevah. She who arose from the deep waters of the primordial sea, ancient Sumerian mother of the mermaids.

ninlil: air goddess and goddess of sailors. Ninlil was raped by sky god Enlil as she was sailing. He was condemned to the underworld. She gives birth to Nanna.

ninsunna: Ninsunna is the Sumerian goddess of divination, goddess of dreams, and takes human form as the Queen of Uruk.

nüt: the Egyptian goddess of the sky and the cosmos. In hieroglyphic depictions, the stars covered her hands and feet. [Nüt] is not ashamed of her body, her breasts fed the rivers and the earth. When she let her hair loose, it curtains Ra’s sun and brought the night. In the morning, she pulled it back to let the day begin, from Jamila by Wessam ElMeligi.

oxumaré: The spirit of the sacred rainbow serpent in Candomblé from which all creation comes forth. It means rainbow in the Yoruba language.

qadesh/qadshu: Semitic goddess of sacred ecstasy and sexual pleasure. She rides on the back of a lion and holds a snake in one hand and a lotus flower in the other.

queen puabi:an ancient Afro-Sumerian queen during the first dynasty of Ur, rumored to be an alien from outer space, buried in her tombs with lavish lapis lazuli strings of beads and gold leaves.

sakina: in pre-Islamic times was the feminine presence and spirit of the creator god Allah in the physical world—the flow from which all creation is born, or a sweet breeze whose face is like the face of a human.

sekhmet: warrioress and Egyptian goddess of healing, divine retribution, vengeance, war. Her breath created the desert. She is the divine arbiter of Ma’at, ruler of menstruation, the One Before Whom Evil Trembles. A woman with the head of a lioness, a cobra scepter.

seshat: the Egyptian deity of writing and drawing. A goddess of wisdom who wore a dress made of panther skin and a headdress adorned with her hieroglyph image1

shahmeran: Persian serpent goddess who the patriarchs tried to eat alive. Half woman/half snake.

shala:Assyrian goddess of compassion and consort to Hadad, god of the storms.

sirena: means mermaid in Spanish. In loteria, the saying for la sirena goes con los cantos de sirena no te vayas marear. Don’t dizzy in the siren’s songs.

suwā:West Arabian goddess of youth, beauty, peace, and rest. She was the patron goddess of natural freshwater springs in the area of Yanbu.

shulsaga:a celestial goddess in the Sumerian pantheon who floats through the stars.

syrena: Sirena means mermaid in Spanish. Syrena is a term I conjured to refer to a Syrian mermaid or a mermaid from Sirius. Like in Journey from Aleppo to the Euphrates (1699), they describe how there were two Syrens, which, twining their fishy tails together, made a seat, on which was placed sitting a naked woman, her arms and the Syrens on each side mutually entwined. The zephyrs who carry the spirit of Venus to the sea. Either way, zhe is an in-betweener, an extraterrestrial, oceanic, and very Syrian.

rudā: a goddess of the rain from the Arabian desert. The tribes of Banu Tamim and Banu Rabi’ah worshipped her. Bestowing her with abundant offerings prevented drought and calamity.

tanit: North African moon goddess who is the protectoress of Carthage. She, like Ishtar, stands on the back of a lion. Her symbols are the dove, grapes, the pomegranate, the crescent moon.

teta: grandmother in some dialects of Arabic.

tiamat: Babylonian ocean goddess,