Beyond the U.S. Veil: Women in the Middle East
October 4, 2006 Wednesday 3PM CT
( listen)
|
This hour on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders, Jean Feraca and her guest discuss women in the Middle East, another program culled from the series "Understanding the Middle East."
Guest
- Mary Layoun, professor of comparative literature at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Poem Mentioned in the Program
Women and Things by Hanan Ashrawi (Palestine)
Women make things
Sometimes like the crocus
surprised by rain, emerging fully
grown from the belly of the earth;
Others like the palm tree with
its promise postponed
rising in a slow
deliberate
spiral to the sky.
Women make things light
afloat
like the breathless
flight of soap bubbles
shimmering in the eyes of a lone
child in a forbidden schoolyard;
And heavy
like the scent of an overripe fruit
exploding at the
knowledg of summer-hardened
soil on days of siege.
Women make things smooth
to the touch
like the kneading of
leavened bread at the dawn of hunger;
And coarse
like the brush of a
homespun coat on
careworn shoulders and bare
arms barely touching on the night of deportation.
Women make things cold
sharp and hard
like a legal argument thrust
before the threat of search and detention;
Or warm
and gentle like
justice in a poem,
like the suggestion of the image of freedom
as a warm bath and
a long soak, in an undemolished home.
Women make things
And as we, in separate
worlds, braid
our daughters’ hair
in the morning, you and
I, each
humming to herself, suddenly
stops
and hears the
tune of the other.
Related Links
|