I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson
is to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted
into energy, so our anger controlled can be transmitted into
a power that can move the world.
- Mohandas K. Gandhi

I. Islam: submission

Girls who break rules
are ruled by a hand, by a fist, by a knife;
replace their throats with embers,
send the smoke up to Heaven
and hope Allah hears them. I see
one young woman in a wheelchair chariot
with suicide written all over her legs in crinkled black
and red canyon lines:
twigs for legs, burned flesh forest,
this is how young women put themselves on altars
hoping for absolution
while trying to start a forest fire that
curls it smoke fingers into noses around the world.
Can we not smell the burning?

For those who have lost hope,
seeking solace in the end of life;
for those whose hearts are broken and in desolation;
we pray to the Lord.
Lord, hear our prayer.

II. Aisha: living

Feet swift to flight,
run to escape a broken back buffeted by blows: this is how your in-laws
welcome you home. With fire, with fists,
with a life of feet bleeding your prayers
out from between prison bars shaped like
commandments. There is a hole in your heart
that dwarfs the one your husband carved into your face: trade empty for empty
until a mountain runs you through the stomach with a
desolated peak wearing lips sewn shut. No one
talks about girls made into examples and left for
dead, except the front pages of magazines. Weeks later, I hear
the camera weeping and praying for
a new nose, new ears: but you can still hear
the news hissing from between the teeth
of a transistor radio while your name
burns quiet eyes to those who wished for your candle
to be snuffed out.

For those who have been unjustly injured or scarred;
for those living in refuge who cannot return home;
we pray to the Lord.
Lord, hear our prayer.

III. Sakina: tranquility

I can see the coins strangling your neck
as they sing songs twisted like the backs of fallen angels
about the worth of a girl:
“we paid good money for you”.
And still, your husband’s family pulls the leash
while you live in white concrete shelter. Your eyes, like your name,
stand in paradox to a storm spinning around you, whirling
enough to make a Sufi dervish lose his god and implode stars
onto the Universe’s forehead. Yet you
sit, scarf-head lotus, on a bed in the corner and fight
the coins still clawing at your throat.

For those in bondage or captivity;
for those fighting for their liberty;
we pray to the Lord.
Lord, hear our prayer.

IV. Fawzia: victorious

I look at you and wonder
if night letters have ever clenched their claws
through your earlobes. Where you sit
makes your stand, and your stand
may make mountains dance, and move deserts
soaked with opium and agony like Qu’ran letters
changed into curved peacocks made out of
blood: this is the generation where your Parliament
begins to welcome women again. Beneath your feet, in the bowels of
the earth, the bodies of murdered women are
crying bismillah. Maybe you hear them.

For those who have answered the call of leadership;
for those who seek justice and equality;
we pray to the Lord.
Lord, hear our prayer.

V. Taliban: students
I wonder whose students you really are. You cannot tell me
that death looks like life and that
prison bars look like the chaste clean air that
crowns the mountain peaks of your country. You fling
blood beneath the feet of children, and call it
discipline. You break off women’s heads and write
your victories and commandments with the pen nubs
of their necks, and call it education. You bring
fire and knives to the hands of your men, and call it holy: but you cannot rewrite
the hearts of men in hard-stone scriptures and hadiths that make them
dig blades into the backs of women when
the demons inside your own arms are calling for escape! Have you
forgotten how men and women share the same flesh – or did you
ever know this in the first place?

You may think I am just an infidel woman. But I am
a landscape, a sculpture of scars. And speaking of which, there is
a woman whose body rests in the ground beneath Battle Creek
whose own scars from a slave master’s whip whisper a hushed amen
to these words: you can hear it
if you put your ear to this poem. If she were an Afghani woman
alive today, she would be wandering your countryside, speaking
sermons from those scars. And as for me, “infidel” or not,
ain’t I a woman too?

But I will pray for you. Not just because
Jesus would want me to, not just because
I have scars in my own heart that look like “whore” and “tramp”
from a life under a roof where words became daggers
and abuse was called discipline; not just because
there are women with empty hearts like bellies
and men who do not know that their real name is “gentle”;
but because you need it. I know fear. I know how
prison bars can be born behind your eyes, set up camp inside your chest,
and refuse your heart any exit. Yes, we are more alike
that you think.

For those who live in mental, spiritual, or
emotional darkness;
for those who live in fear and who cannot see light;
we pray to the Lord.
Lord, hear our prayer.

VI. Bismillah
And for all of you:
pie Iesu Domine,
dona eis pacem.
Written 9-20-10
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This week’s poem is for We Write Poems Prompt #20: Exceptions to the Rule. This poem was inspired by this article in Time Magazine about the plight of Afghani women in the wake of possible negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban, the former regime in that country. I was especially struck by and angered by the story of 18 year-old Aisha (who is feature in the article and who is on the cover of the recent issue) and I was moved to write this. I’d suggest not only perusing the article, but also looking at the photo gallery of the women featured on the website to understand where this poem came from.

-Nicole

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