Am I English?
I Am Not One Thing
I am the father who wakes before the house,
loads the dishwasher, does the school run,
then rushes to work.
I am the Liverpool fan,
cursing the team beneath my breath,
yet wearing the red jersey,
singing You’ll Never Walk Alone.
I am the Jordanian,
pouring rich Arabic coffee from the pot,
Eating Mansaf by hand,
frowning and joking and self-deprecating.
I am full of contradictions.
Love, hate, joy and anger.
I can hold them all, at once.
I am not one thing.
I am the man walking for miles,
listening to Peace Train, setting fire to the rain,
enjoying Suicidal Thoughts,
on the Highway to Hell.
Arabic songs,
Persian and French ones
Languages I do not understand,
and poems, so many poems.
Do not ask me to explain
I am the Palestinian in London streets,
walking with hundreds of thousands,
chanting for a free Palestine.
And I am the immigrant on the Underground,
listening to Macbeth as an audiobook,
intermittently playing Candy Crush on my phone
while the city carries me to work.
And somewhere, someone is deciding
whether I am English.
What must I leave behind
to make myself belong?
I have come from every direction.
North. East. West. South.
Like the NEWS,
I am every direction
And full of contradictions
All at once.
And if you need me to be only one thing,
the limitation is not mine.
Ahmad Baker
October 2026