I Stand By Your Ear Unseen

I stand by your ear unseen.
Before the flogging they buried me to my waist in mud.
One hundred times and one, they beat me with a cane.
Because I was wearing a burqa
the mullah was spared the sight of my blood.
When my family took me home I was unconscious.
they were forbidden to seek treatment.
When I died the next morning no one was surprised.
It was three days after my 18th birthday.

I stand by your ear unseen.
When I was 14 I wanted to be a teacher. I remember
laughing with my friends on the way home from school.
I remember writing poems about the future
daydreaming at the window into velvet sky.
Impossible, then, to believe what would come
after the Taliban took our town.

I stand by your ear unseen.
When I was 15 they came. The wide world choked shut.
Collapsed to a point of fear, hunger. Constant.
My sisters and I ate what brothers left. Little. They
could leave the house for classes, for work.
My mother's office job was taken away.
When my uncle would accompany her
she took her turn wearing a neighborhood burqa
so she could look for food. She sold our books.

I stand by your ear unseen.
Three years. My youngest sister sickened.
My father carried her to the hospital but
they told him to throw her away. She died at the  door.
That's when my anger endangered all of us
In her name I started a secret school. To read
to write, five little girls and I risked our lives.
I would do it again. It was a way for ghosts
to have hands and voices for awhile.

I stand by your ear unseen.
When another decree was issued,
that houses with women have all windows
painted black, we had no funds.
My father was gone, forced into the militia.
My mother had nothing left to sell.
They marched in to bully us
found the hidden school slates behind my bed.
Hauled to the mullah, I told nothing.
He shut the door and raped me.

I stand by your ears unseen
Famine and depression make periods scant.
I didn't know about the baby at first.
My aunt had the right herb in a hidden pot on her roof.
She stayed while my baby bled out.
A new decree, forbidden to make sound when we walk,
caught her when she left.  She didn't have shoes that were silent.
They beat her on the street until her accompanying son
in his panic tried to shield her
by sacrificing me. The mullah learned everything.


I stand by your ear unseen.
He announced my offense of having an abortion
which proved I was promiscuous.
My crimes cloaked his and no one
could do anything but pray I might survive.
That prayer was not mine. I was ready to depart.
I do not ask for personal mourning. Twelve million living
women and girls require your outrage.
Lift your veil! Open your ear.


By: Sue Silvermarie, an American supporter of the
Revolutionary Assoc. of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

The RAWA website address is:
http://rawa.false.net/index.html

Together we can heal the world, one heart at a time.