Gate A-4
At an airport gate, Arabic, a Palestinian embroidered dress, ma'amoul, and a carried plant turn fear between strangers into a temporary shared world.
About this poem
The speaker of Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Gate A-4” hears an airport call for anyone who understands Arabic. At the gate, an older woman in Palestinian embroidered dress believes a delayed flight has been cancelled and fears she will miss medical treatment. Conversation corrects the misunderstanding; calls to relatives and Palestinian poets follow.
Then the scale of the poem changes. Ma’amoul shared across the waiting area, apple juice passed around, and a medicinal plant carried in the woman’s bag make an ordinary airport delay into a brief community. Palestinian culture is not presented as display. Language, food, dress, and the habit of carrying a living plant become things people use to care for one another.
The Academy of American Poets credits the poem to Nye’s Honeybee and gives a 2008 copyright. It remains under copyright and is not reproduced here. The Academy publishes the full text with permission and also offers a teaching guide and a recording of Nye reading it.
Sources
- “Gate A-4” — Academy of American Poets (full poem, reprinted with permission)
- Teach This Poem: “Gate A-4” — Academy of American Poets
Connected in the archive
1 connected record1 record elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
written by — 1 record
- Naomi Shihab Nye
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: poetSlug: "naomi-shihab-nye" → Naomi Shihab Nye
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Gate A-4 — Naomi Shihab Nye.” Poems, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/poems/gate-a-4.- MLA
“Gate A-4 — Naomi Shihab Nye.” Poems, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/poems/gate-a-4. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-gate-a-4, title = {Gate A-4 — Naomi Shihab Nye}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/poems/gate-a-4}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }