ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS                                            

  The author is grateful to the editors of the following magazines for publishing earlier
  versions of these poems

  Antioch Review:  "Letter to Ibrahim"
  Artful Dodge:  "Days of 1948"
  Caliban: "Istanbul, 1923"
  Callaloo: "White Nile Elegy", "Days of 1933", "Atta"
  The Cimarron Review: "Samovar Love Compendium"
  Crab Orchard Review;   "Double Portrait with Trains",  "Days of 1959"
  Crazyhorse: "Ismailia Eclipse", "Three Kitchens", "Fifty April Years", "Two-River Ledger"
  Georgetown Review: "The Pyramid of Khufu"
  The Graham House Review:  "General Italo Balbo"
  Hayden's Ferry Review:  "What She Said on A Lewd Lute Night"
  Indiana Review: "In the Glorious Yemen Restaurant"
  International Quarterly:  "The Mail from Tunis"
  The Iowa Review:  "History of My Face", "Saniya's Dreams"
  The Kenyon Review:  ""Watermelon Tales", "The Bloomingfoods Promise",                
  "To His Father: A Biography"
  The Michigan Quarterly Review: "Growing Up with A Sears Catalog in Benghazi, Libya", "In the Cold   Season"(under the title  Let Us Believe Again')
  Mississippi Review: "Ramadan"
  New England Review :   "Borrowed Tongue", "The Bus Driver Poem" (under the
  title  Bright Yellow, Ketchup Red')
  Phoebe:  "Date Palm Trinity"
  Poetry East:  "Maryam"
  Sonora Review:  "Zai El-Hawa"
  The South Florida Poetry Review:  "Summertime Cavatinas" (appeared under the title  'Summers')
  Willow Springs  "I Was Buried in Janzoor"
  "Watermelon Tales" also appeared in the The Pushcart Prize XIX 1994-1995; and
  along with "History of My Face" in The Literatures of Africa and Asia, ed. Willis
  and Tony Barnstone.

  Special thanks to Yusef Komunyakaa and David Wojahn for their insightful critiques and for
  their generosity and encouragement during the time it took to write these poems and assemble the
  manuscript.  I am also grateful to Talvi Ansel, Willis Barnstone, Chris Green, Gretchen Knapp,
  and Gilly Nadel for  valuable suggestions that helped shape the manuscript during the various
  stages of its preparation.  Finally, thanks to Stanley Moss for his meticulous observations and helpful
  suggestions.

  Thanks also to the administration of California State University, Northridge for a grant during
  the spring of 1995.