Witness

In the most ravenous parts of me
The fleshy wounded parts I want
To offer lips that don’t shout back
For and through I take bitter words
Salt the air before the entrance
When I fall heavy in places quieted
With unfamiliar rest the day presses
On my eyelids with force and grit
I have seen too much, I know more
Than they intended.

Reaction: The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

"I was a little girl and then I wasn't. I was a bacha posh and then I wasn't. I was a daughter and then I wasn't. I was a mother and then I wasn't."

There were moments in the course of reading this book that had me paralyzed.  This was more often a sobering read than it was a tragic one.  I followed Rahim(a) with an attentive eye, finding connections with her bacha posh life and mine as a young tomboy.  When she was changed back into a girl, it was with a heavy heart that I read the lines and understood that it was only because she and her sisters were to be married off in exchange for money to further fuel her father's opium addiction which soon became their mother's.  

I cannot imagine putting a price on the body of my young daughter - Ages 12, 13, and 14 Rahima and her sisters were married off into the life of a warlord family to bear children, to lose life, to lose the blindness of a sheltered life, to taste the richness of an open window at the seat of parliament.  Often, I would close the book and exhale loudly.   I would press my hands onto the pages wanting one of them to reach out and not have to endure the life of a young Afghan girl in war torn Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Following Shekiba through her early 20th century life, the great great grandmother of Rahim(a), I admired her skill, her endurance and her hope.  She often reminded me of my grandmother in her incessant will to survive and her faith in God.  Also, a bacha posh for a time, Shekiba knew the importance of her life in guarding the king's harem.  

Through a mighty tragic event she was spared a stoning, but the concubine she was to be protecting did not.  Hashimi describes in artful detail the stoning of this young woman and with each stone that belted the life out of her, I almost could not read on.  Stoning was (and is) true for so many woman that stood outside of the box of rules ordered of them.  Shekiba could be described as a mighty warrior woman who found her place, at last, among the backdrop of an impossible journey.  

Although, this was a work of fiction, it still brought me to my knees to read of these women.  I admired their hope and their courage.  I recommend this book.  Don't give up.

Collections 2

I have collected songs to honor my mother

a thistle and nimble contribution

Her fingers are numb and don't reach out for my face

I whisper a caress into her lobes

It falls short of grace

How often I fall short of it when left

alone inside of myself

I take it all back each time she is asleep

She is laid peacefully on an awning that

is dew-bitten on the hem

Her hair weaves the matter of fact stories

years dictated to the split ends

My fingers bow onto her hand as it rests

a half moon from the picking fields

A quiet prayer beats in rhythm with my heart

mindful of the pump jack outside of her window

That is a different time captured in the snapshot

of the window frame built of hands and breaths

I have long forgotten

My regrets are stacked in perfected wooden crates

filled with opaque vellum sheets

These breaths are her last and as predictable as

the dust that has gathered on the corners of my

inflamed ego

Mother

The smell lingers in our home
like a canopy of fog surrendering
innocence to the obstructions I built

I swat at the air to dismiss the smell
yet it finds another area of my body
to plead not guilty

At the surface we beg for light
we partner with distrust and I
still do not comprehend where to go

Back to the forgiving light or
into the mute color of reasoning

Steadily and almost mockingly
my feet gather gumption and
we proceed to her body