I am amazed. Absolutely amazed. I listen to them now and think of the small small life I lived in my small small bubble, in this small, protected little sphere of life where everything was externally mediated and I think dear god how could i have lived like that? How could i have even learned to THINK in that bubble? Let alone reject the external mediation and try and try to get a hold of things for myself. I listen to them and think I was like that once but was I? I remember my life in the past 17 years like a haze – only bits and pieces here and a little there – moments without feeling crushed together, floating in this vacuum of ultimate nothingness. Ultimate nothingness that was meant to be my life, my purpose in that country, society, people.

Life has grown for me here and given me space to grow. And I only just now realize it, after looking back at what it was I moved on from.

What comes out of this pain?

echoing through centuries the lament

of being alive and human and sane

We carry on in the wrong lane

tracing the paths of our descent

to find what comes out of this pain

As gatherers we venture out for gain

from our flimsy paper tent

of the alive and human and sane

Walking while predators line the plane

all that happens now happens with our consent

to what comes out of this pain

And this time the Earth does not birth grain

we return with bodies and heads bent

to be alive and human and sane

Many of us have lain

tired nights, long, bodies spent

for what comes out of this pain

of being alive and human and sane

Your jacket lies

in my room

where I come to smell it

should I begin

to lose your scent

You said

I don’t know

how

this began,

or when

amnesia seizes us turning

bits of our lives to void

the wells empty

and hunger

sits at the edges

of our tongues

—

After I had poured myself

into you

after we each had drunk

and satisfied ourselves    moment-

arily we sat with bellies

full still groping

for that last drop    the last

gulp which would

quell our hunger    but

the lie never surfaced

—

we came to each

other as a land

of forgotten landmarks

bodies rigid with

subdued desperation

there is the cracked

sidewalk I tripped on

and scarred my knee

there is

the hill you climbed

chasing june-bugs

—

later in your car I

tell you lies    there

is no sidewalk    no

chase

you roll

my words on the edge

of your tongue we swerve

violently off the hill

I don’t know

how

this began

or when

your body

slashed open

as I grope for

the last drop

with which to quell

this hunger before

the void forms itself again

the sounds break open

and die at your feet -

what are we

supposed to say to this?

the heretical sound

of music this night when

no words can be said

to our children

of what we have done to ourselves

of what we keep doing –

tonight the sirens

sing us to sleep

to a chorus of rhythmic bombing

tonight the sirens

wail    somebody

has been shot, somebody

has been knifed, somebody

raped

or all three    or somebody

has been netted

with bullets, dragged

into a cell, stripped

mutilated,    or somebody

has choked on a pretzel

.tonight

we lay our children to sleep

shutting the fairytale we told

them so they may rest peacefully

tonight    in some other world

that we do not know    (do not wish

to know)    a child

lays entrapped in

the song of the sirens

tonight the sounds break

open

but die at your feet –

tomorrow there will be nothing

to say of this.

I wouldn’t want to be left in the same room with him, relatively alone. It was only the two of us, and then him. Its better to judge wrongly and leave, then to stay and risk…stuff.

The threat was real then. He could easily have done things to us. The door could lock. The walls were thick concrete – sounds didn’t easily pass through. And he could’ve.

He had this look about him. Like he would. Like he was on edge, ready to snap at any moment, any mistaken word. Like he couldn’t look at us without thinking about “it”. But it might just have been me.

So I left. Didn’t wait for any more evidence. Its usually too late by then anyways. I don’t know what happened to the other girl who was with me. She didn’t leave. You could accuse me of abandoning her there, but I didn’t. I told her what I thought and left it up to her. We spoke about him later on. She said he was a nice guy. He might well have been. A lot of them are. Nice.

I have hit a writing plateau. My poetry is terrible (not improving) and I cannot even begin to write prose. My words are weak. There is SOME thing I want to say, that is swimming around in my head but I can not for the life of my find the right words.

And so, I have been reading. Amazingly, Adrienne Rich is not at the top of the list this time (because I do not have the time!). Only assigned course readings but fun ones…well, my version of fun…which involves staring for hours at the blank space between the lines, trying to figure out what the writer has implied.

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye – I read this before, about an year ago when I borrowed it from the college library (also where I discovered Rich). Loved it ever since. It is, stripping down to the bare essentials, a story of a little black girl named Pecola. Of course, that isn’t the real story. It never is.

Doris Lessing’s The Cleft - half way through this interestingly topsy-turvy retelling of the origins of “man” quite literally. That is, a boy child being born in a pre-existing community of women. It is interesting because although it is topsy-turvy, a lot of the conventional “female” attributes and roles are assigned to the first women. The novel explains it as the story being translated by a male historian presumably in Rome’s early ages. Even so, I think there is more to it. I will be posting a review of this soon, if I can manage it between…everything there is to be done.

I have also been researching on the Villanelle form for my english paper and have found beautiful poems by Marilyn Hacker, Martha Collins, Theodore Roethke and how can we forget Leonard Cohen! Click and enjoy your mind being turned to blissful mush.

On my shelf, waiting to be “completed”, are a billion other titles (well, 13 at least). But I must first complete a bunch of assignments and extra curriculars and yes…generally manage my time a hell of a lot better.

Signing out!

My values and ideas are dated. It is as though I’m fighting against a demon that has been vanquished. I feel slightly insane. At the same time I am shocked at people’s passivity and obliviousness to the demon’s existence. It is there! Can they not see?! But it is not. How do I reconcile my acknowledgment with their denial? Is there a demon? Am I deluding myself?

I have not been able to analyze the life here to be sure enough. What if the demon has died already? Has the demon died already? They say so. But I don’t believe it. It is like returning from war and expecting bombs to keep falling. I am still afraid. I am still on edge. I am still acutely aware and yet I am not. My energy leaks away, analyzing trivialities, all for protection and none of it is translated into useful knowledge. I know how they move, how they talk, I know how to identify them from several feet away and yet I do not know how to put it down in words for others to know. I don’t know how to stop this. Do I want to stop this?

I am fighting against something that no longer exists. Thus, I must be insane. But am I? Am I really?

Doubt.

I fear I will lose myself in my little ideas and thoughts, and die. I fear I will die having done nothing to turn my little thoughts into big actions. I fear death before I have been able to untangle myself from the tediums of everyday life, to transcend the needs of the day to day (money, food, living space). I fear death before i have transcended the everyday and changed it so it no longer needs to be transcended.

Every day we begin again.

Every night as you drift to sleep thinking of tomorrow, what is it you’re looking at? She stands there, between the far end of the horizon and the place where your sight gives way to blurry globs of colour. She does not speak to you. The only sound you hear is the wind as it blows away her scent, co-mingled with the wet-earth smell post-rain, and the taste of iron lies on your tongue.

Every time I turn to her, she is gone.

She comes wearing new dresses each day, all wet-edged with grass. My hands are numb with cold and I cannot see if she asks something of me.

I keep walking.

Every time I turn to her, she is gone.

A little girl gets caught in the crush of women waiting to receive gifts sponsored by USAID in honour of International Women’s Day in Kandahar City. With resources in short supply, women jostle each other to make sure they get their share.

Photo by Paula Lerner

The Globe and Mail has recently published a series of interviews, titled “Behind the Veil”. This series endeavors to bring to public attention the everyday plight of the Afghan woman, and more generally, the oppressed woman, wherever she is. Unfortunately, despite procuring several opportunities to speak privately to these women, The Globe and Mail has failed to produce what could have been among the most powerful pieces of feminist reporting in our era.

A major fail-factor with regard to these interviews was The Globe’s shitty methodology. The interviews were conducted by a hired local woman/girl (I believe there were two because there are two different voices). The hired Globe proxy was “trained” to use a digital camera and to ask the interviewees a bunch of questions on a list that The Globe provided. The list consisted of basic identification questions (name, place of birth and residence, marital status etc) to more “serious” ones such as “what is the difference between men’s and women’s lives in Afghanistan?” “What do you think of the political situation in Afghanistan?” and my personal favourite, “Have you ever driven a car?”. I’m sure that between the daily beatings and degradation that woman face everyday, they’re all just crushed by the fact that they aren’t allowed to drive cars. Absolutely crushed. The denial of choice in marriage, the denial of birth control, the denial of all those other more important things is secondary, of course.

WHAT was The Globe thinking when they put in that question? Or were they thinking at all?

The entire series seems to be centered on evoking a response from the independent, working woman, instead of trying to represent the life of an Afghan woman without biases. The effect of this series would have been exponentially stronger had The Globe tried to promote a sense of solidarity between the Afghan woman and the American woman (or Canadian, or European, etc) instead of projecting Afghan culture as different from ours and thus harrowing. The Perils of Feminist Angst are exactly this – projecting our cultural values onto another person and judging their life by that standard – illustrated beautifully in the question “Have you ever driven a car?”

The penchant people have for finding differences between their culture and one the have judged to be “inferior” is remarkable, and dangerously misleading. In approaching the study of a culture with biases, a researcher or reporter or communicator loses the ability to present an objective 360-degree view of the dynamics at work in that culture. This is what has happened and what keeps happening in articles or news pieces regarding the Afghan culture or others similarly deemed inferior. In asking women if they have ever driven a car, The Globe is implying that driving a car is a priority. But is it? Wouldn’t these women rather have safe households? Wouldn’t they rather be allowed to grow up before they are required to consummate marriages with men sometimes 10 times their age? Why did the Globe not ask them why they raised their sons to be abusive, domineering men? Why did the Globe not ask Mothers in Law why they treat their Daughters in Law with such hatred when they themselves have been in that position?

The flaw lies again with The Globes interviewing “techniques” and the fact that a professional reporter did not conduct these interviews. Instead of an empathetic connection forming between the interviewer and interviewee, a mutual trust, there is a distance and a sense of duty. The interviewees communicate suspicion through even their burka-clad faces as the interviewer reads from her list of questions robotically, not acknowledging and responding to their answers but just drumming out her own questions. An opportunity for female connection and understanding has been lost, and while facing dismissal from their male counterparts, the Afghan women face it from their kind too.

I will end this post with a poem by the renowned Adrienne Rich, who has been and still is among the most influential feminist activists to ever have lived.

Women

My three sisters are sitting
on rocks of black obsidian.
For the first time, in this light, I can see who they are.

My first sister is sewing her costume for the procession.
She is going as the Transparent lady
and all her nerves will be visible.

My second sister is also sewing,
at the seam over her heart which has never healed entirely,
At last, she hopes, this tightness in her chest will ease.

My third sister is gazing
at a dark-red crust spreading westward far out on the sea.
Her stockings are torn but she is beautiful.