Or real curiosity and sympathy and trying to listen to other cultures, subcultures, minorities, humans who have different opinions to us. I still remember with a shudder the businessman I met at a networking meeting in 2009 or so, who said: ‘What’s the need for any cross-cultural awareness training? We all travel nowadays!’

Let Me Help
Your hands pick up, put down, in gestures trained,
your lip curls where a dimple was once placed.
You ignore the salt, the braided bread my family
hands out on a platter.
You wash down their fulsome questions with
my uncles’s plum brandy,
solemnly incline your head, so we can
appreciate your importance
your Western ways.
Let me help you move that suitcase
out of my life
but not too far
not next door
with their political leanings
and teeth of alabaster.