Free verse № 126873
Unclean
It mattered not what Mohammed taughtâ
the works, the prayers, the pillars.
Her thoughts were not concerned with these
as sisters dressed her wounds
and tried as best they could
to soothe her troubled mind.
Neither threat of virus
nor fetusâ curse
frightened a hurt soul more
than one all-important fear.
Not humiliation or disgrace,
pain, or memory of his face;
and so she asked with trepidation:
Will it show? Will my husband know?
All the sisters understood,
and would have feared the same
had they been lying on that bed.
So as night turned into morning
she withheld her screams of pain,
while women mended, bandaged wounds,
and added other cuts and bruises
to disguise as best they could
injury as a robbers act,
to spare their friend a greater painâ
a husbandâs eye, keen to learn
if his wifeâs become unclean,
and if she is,
to cast her out for Allahâs good.
22 comments
to disguise as best they could
injury as a robbers act<<
The most horrifying part, in fact.
The woman's question; a breathtaking moment.
White's also and many more races.
Let me try to set your mind at ease: If Dovina's poem is a little, um, inaccurate or ignorant in parts, the concern of the raped woman is a real and widespread in the Middle East. Actually, I happen to be sitting in an internet cafe in the Kingdom of Jordan and there's a woman using the computer next to me. Let me ask her.
zodiac: If you were raped would you be afraid of some terrible repercussion from your husband, presumably a devout Muslim?
Nameless Muslim Woman: Oh yes, definitely.
So there you have it. Dovina's just told the semi-truth about a bad aspect of the Arabic world. If she hasn't included a lot of the good stuff about it, so what, and she probably doesn't hear a lot about that part. Neither have you, for that matter. And I notice you're not criticizing a lot of poems that point out America's bad aspects. It seems like you're suggesting any poem that doesn't point out an equal number of good and bad aspects of something is as intolerant as Jew-hating. Is that really what you want to say?
PS-About Jew-hating. Jews are, naturally, hated by practically everyone in this country. But then, Jews did simply take an entire, incredibly-useful piece of land that belong to Arabs, displacing its Muslim residents, and, ever since, regularly reneging on promises they've made to Arabic countries, like removing their hundreds of settlements from the sliver of land left to Palestinians - a sliver of land legally owned and occupied by Arabs since antiquity. Or, like the treaty promising Jordan water from Israel's three (and soon to be six) dams on the Jordan River, in exchange for the devastation wrought in Jordan by the River's decreased flow.
Anyway, would you say this hatred is, um, intolerant?
However, I did see the images in my head as I read it.
Disease might be better than virus, because it is more encompassing.
fear.(,)
Not(neither) humiliation or disgrace,
pain, or (the)memory of his face;
There is nothing poetic in the modern trend to simple leave words out, I mean words that grammatically should be there, such as the definite and indefinite articles , in fact it makes a sentence look ugly.
injury as a robbers act,
the injury as a robber's act,
to cast her out for Allahâs good.
to be cast her out for Allahâs blessing.
Any Muslem would tell you no man can do something for the good of God, God is already as good as it is possible to be. They do things in God's name, or in order to satisfy God's commands
I have looked at your suggested line edits and, while I find no overt grammatical errors or ugly structure, your opinion on this is as good as mine. Your changes would simplify the reading, making it more like an essay, less like a poem.
Your point about trying to make Allah better by casting the woman out would be a good point if that were what I meant. (Itâs the same point zodiac makes below.) The fact that both of you took it that way means that I might want to rephrase. Surely, the husband did not think Allah needs improvement. He probably thought that anything done to respect or adore Allah would be a good thing â âfor Allahâs good.â I think Iâll change the last line to âto cast her out in Allahâs name.â
A interesting thing about both Islam and Christianity is that the founderâs teachings have little impact the practices of those religions. Some of the churches are beginning to see that Jesusâ teachings actually have value as they are written, and some of the Islamic teachers are beginning to do the same with Mohammedâs words.
First off, in response to your "cast out of society" comment from my post, you should know that Jordan (along with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and many neighborhoods in Egypt and UAE) is middling liberal for Islamic countries. Here, a raped-but-married woman would either, one, say nothing and neither would her husband or, two, be encouraged by her family to return to her parents' house, not go outside very much, be unemployed, and not have many friends besides her family and close neighbors. In other words, she'd be exactly as she was before she got married and mostly as she was WHILE she was married, except she naturally wouldn't be hoping to get married again. (This, incidentally, is the situation of about a dozen women I know whose marriages have broken up for some reason or other.) You must understand: In almost no part of the Middle East do women BELONG to any society they can be cast out of. If your raped woman came from my part of the world, she would be divorced but IN EVERY RESPECT indistinguishable from any other woman in the country. In other words, she'd be practically invisible.
The more real danger (and this is what separates us from Saudi Arabia and non-liberal Muslim countries - that is, it's bad enough here and gets worse there,) is that she'll be killed or beaten into some crippled state by her husband or brothers. You can call this "cast out of society" if you want, but it's really more accurately "cast out of earthly existence altogether."
That said, about the poem. Yes, Mohammed did in fact teach respect for women. All Muslims know this. In fact, most Muslims know that after Mohammed's famous statement that men can marry "one, two, three, or even four women" he immediately added, "but you have to love them exactly the same amount." Most Muslims also know that, this being impossible, it's essentially the same thing as saying you can't marry more than one. And most don't care. Muslims here (and at least in the parts of the Arabic world I see on tv) are about as Muslim as most Americans are Christian. Pointing out that Muslims aren't exactly adhering to the letter of their faith is pretty much a losing battle, and about as useful as pointing out that Christians aren't either. That is to say, not useful at all.
Stanza 2: "disgrace" made me laugh.
Stanza 4: Robbers! Tee-hee. For one, there are much fewer violent robbers in the Middle East than rapists. As a cover-up, this would be totally unbelievable. For another thing, and more importantly, a woman violently robbed will be as much disgraced as a woman raped; it's just as Haram, and it will simply be assumed that she was raped, too. As far as my experience goes, she'd be just as well off as if she'd admitted the rape. If you're going to say your Muslim friend tried this dodge - well, good luck to her. I don't see how it worked.
Also, "cast her out for Allah's good": No non-insane person in the Arabic world would say or think something like this. Everybody here knows Allah is already all-good. It's an enormous sin to think he could be improved or kept from taint, i.e., that something could be done for his good. In reality, she's cast out for the men of the community's good. All repression of women under Islam, from the Qura'an down, is justified as a way of protecting MEN who, exposed to women's charms, even a wisp of her hair, would not be able to keep themselves from sinning. It's flattering, see? The women's good is secondary. Obviously, a woman who's already been raped would pose double the temptation to men; that's why they need to be protected from her. Don't ask me to explain why. I can't.
Good poetry, though.
I donât know why you laugh at âdisgraceâ in Stanza 2. Humiliation and a feeling of being disgraced are usual parts of rape-trauma. I was pointing out that for this woman those feelings are a far lesser concern that her husbandâs discovery that sheâd been raped.
See my answer above for "cast her out for Allah's good"
I know - and knew - what you meant by "cast her out for Allah's good". You're on the righter track now, it seems.
Overall pfg.
Log in to add a comment.