I read your books,
And mastered your tongue;
Your Dante and Milton,
Shakespeare and Keats,
Your Hugo, Russel,
Camus and Sartre
And Marx;
Your philosophy, your science.
Your ‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’,
I watched with amazement;
For, had not our civilizations
Lived and grown
Aeons before you ‘discovered’ us?
I hear your righteous anger
Against my ‘enslavement,
My veil.
You wanted to see me naked
Just like your women,
Who you have stripped
Of thought and ideas,
Of the right to dignity
Of choice and decision.
The jewels of symbolisms,
The clothes of modesty,
The veil of feminity,
You stripped her of all
But her skin.
Then you sold it amongst yourselves
She has nowhere to hide.
Her raucous voice
Screams agression,
But you do not hear.
You enslaved her mind
To think your thoughts,
You sewed her lips
And painted in red, your words
On them.
You fought on her behalf,
You ruled over her destiny.
You took all her votes
But gave her no seat of power,
No will, no agency.
But yes,
You gave her the opium of one word
‘Liberty’.
You opened the doors for her,
To show more and more of her skin,
To drinks and drugs,
To abuse and rape,
To be an object
To be bought and sold,
But
Not to govern her own life;
She could sleep with you
If she so wished,
But she could not refuse
to bear an unwanted child.
That was all in the name of God;
Your God, the God you created
To do your will.
A God that follows you
Not the one you follow.
You crucified him
On the cross of materialism,
Of expediency.
Your woman works alongside you
But takes home a lighter wage.
She could beg the State of Men
For her rights,
In the family, she had none.
You want me to be like her?
My veil you tore many times
And presented a shroud in its place.
I carry within me for thousands of years
The books,
The people of the books.
And the Prophets of the people.
Your Prophets
Took birth from my womb
Which you relentlessly bombed.
You desecrated
The land of Moses, of Christ and of Muhammad
The rock from which you drew flame,
You stole from my land and left it barren.
You took away
My children and tortured them,
Then cut them down like harvest
In the fields.
You said
They sinned against you,
In defending their mother,
Their father and brother,
Their land
And their faith.
They sinned against you
In defending the fruits of their land,
The Oil and Gems and Grain
From your marauding armies.
They stood undeterred;
David against the Goliath,
And I,
I stood behind them
In the veil.
You stepped forward
To cast my sons in steel
I stood ready
To take their lifeless bodies upon my lap,
To soak my earth
With their blood,
To raise more sons
And more daughters
To stand in your way.
I still stand behind my veil,
Steel woman of the East.