REPLY (OR 'TO ANY ONE WHO HAS EVER TOLD ME TO "MAN UP") // HALA ABDULLA

To everyone who has ever asked me to “man up”:

please,

take another fucking look at me.

I am all woman,
all double-x,
all lower-your-voice,
all cover-yourself,
all flash-a-smile,
be delicate,
all survival,
survival,
all surviving,
all fight.

In my conditioned silence all I had been
fighting
for years
is my own instinct.

Every feeling of inferiority planted underneath
my skin.

But I will no longer be victim to this.

I will no longer be subjected to the
sickening degradation of my sex.

I am more than this.

I am centuries of women being beaten up
and burnt at the stakes,
the silent screams held behind their
clenched teeth,
I am the black and blue circles on their
covered faces,
the reincarnation of every girl buried
before ever being able to breathe,

I am the woman I will teach my daughter to be
and I too, promise to not be silenced.

Will not have my gender dragged through the
mud in the name of their righteousness.

We know we are more than this.

But the men in my country have thrown us into open
graves.

Like their ancestors before them, they have
found it best to stifle our whimpers before
they grew into screams.

But I have been clawing my way out of dirt
for so long and I will not rest until I feel
the sun on my face again,

until I am standing on the same steady ground
that they parade on so full of feigned piety.

I am coming back for all the rights that were
dragged away from me.

Before you tell me to “man up”,

know that my womanhood has been stolen away
from me.

Has been turned into something
so perverse,
so wrung with evil,

I had spent years wishing I wasn’t so unholy,

but I’m taking it back.

I do not wish to be anything other than what
I am,

so believe me when I tell you that I will never
“man” up.

I will reclaim the force of my gender,

Realize the holiness of my existence,
rekindle the ashen fires of my passions.

I am a woman reclaiming the sacredness of the
disgraced term

“woman”.

So the next time you want to remind me of my strength,
tell me of our history. Of the women who have waged wars
against all this ignorance before me.

The next time you want to remind me of my strength,

don’t you dare tell me to “man up”.

Just remind me that:

I am all woman,
all double-x, all oestrogen,

I am a force to be reckoned with,
a movement within myself,

all woman,
all power,
all power,
all power.

[buy hala's book]

سكر بنات // HAYAT

Her mother was making iftar in the kitchen, she sneaked her hips next to the phone and checked if Moustafa was around. 

In seconds she lowered her head fearing God would see her wide smile because he wasn’t, and she can click his numbers. 

Her mother called her name, but she was too busy counting the spaces between each ghazal word she’ll mutter to the boy who sold her salt, a smile and a number for more.

She clicked, clicked, clicke- What if he thinks the way she wears her head scarf is funny? What if she’s just another costumer? What if he gave her his number just so she’d tell him she tasted the shore when the salt met her tongue?

She didn’t click the last number, put the phone back on the table, hid the number between her young breasts and went to help her mother.

Maybe god saw my smile and didn’t want me to fall in love before I bleed after all, she thought.

***
cover photo // stills from caramel (2007) 

"LET'S WALK" // HAYAT

Your mind speaks stuff that makes irony laugh at times, like today when you told me to go for a walk, like ordinary people, and enjoy heat and smile because today we’re together like yesterday and that is a good reason to celebrate.

Let’s brush our fingertips like they’re used to it and let’s follow each others’ shadows like we’ve known them for our whole lives.

Let’s pretend we’re each others’ future.
Let’s point at people and say they’re the insane ones.

You make me happy, your mother told me you were born in mornings in a dream of mine. 
You’re the son of a sun that decided to take its place on an October sky.

WOOL AND FLUFF // JOHARA ALMOGBEL

There once was a girl,
as plain as can be.
With a green dress,
as blue as the sea.
Who woke up one morning,
needing a wee.
Except her bladder wouldn’t go,
not even a pea.
So she went to a doctor,
sympathetic was he.
“I have looked up your thing,
and all I could see
You have a fly in that hole,
a crab and a flea.”
“Oh dear! Dear doctor!
Will I need surgery?”
“At once! We must!
Tis quite an emergency!”

And so the story ends.

Except he
wasn’t a doctor
But a witch.
And so

she died.

ODE // RAGHAD

5 AM:
Human ambulances
distributing oxygen masks
to a world that has set itself
on fire.
Sirens colouring
the reds and the blues
on the faces of the comatose.
Wake up
or sleep on this:
it’s been a long time
since we’ve
figured out new ways
to mend broken people.
Wake up,
they’re building cities out 
of us,
vertebra by vertebra. 
Wake up.

24-hour Emergencies:
Attempting to resuscitate the romance 
slaughtered at the feet of novel love.
Carving brand new eyes
for visions stuck in old city gutters.
Prescribing a new dictionary for women
sick with empty adjectives. 
Support groups for freedoms
put on life support.

5 PM:
Addressers of the uncomfortable,
those who are enamoured by the wonders 
existing in human kindness.
Those soul indulgers, 
middle school white chalk breathers,
sun celebrating , 
midnight riding,
bright century creatures,
who dance differently,
but dance all the same
to amplify their belief;
not the type of belief
that turns stale
with forced repetition,
but the type that feels 
like a destination. 
Ode to those who shared
their survival manuals
with their neighbours.

THE SIGNIFICANT/INSIGNIFICANT SAPIENS // ADNAN AL ABAR

A being originated from nothingness, aiming at nothingness, but still full of life.

As a sword forged from the strongest nonexistent metals to strike the anvil it was forged on with all its might, then vanishes.

Humans, whom had tamed the Kalahari and the Arctic weathers; mighty, O’so mighty, yet vulnerable to a measly drop of poison.

Beings marked by their omniscience, knowing so much, beginning from just axioms, yet pride themselves in knowing nothing.

Such strange beings, running as fast as the wind (even faster), towards glowing points, but if asked about their direction, slow down to a halt.

Always progressing, always heightening. But as they say: The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

So significant we are, yet so insignificant. We are everything to us, but nothing to anything else.

THE POWER OF WORDS // HAYAT

You steady your brain, warm  your heart with a cup of tea, you feel your lips and push a tiny smile for what’s about to come.

You think, we’re atoms, particles of what once lived, graves are only a secret door to the what’s about to come, and in that process, all of the gossip, the fights, the sleepless nights of ache seem less worthy.

Your smiles start dancing themselves into deeper corners.
Your bones start feeling lighter.
Your brain remembers no bad anymore.

Then before you know,

your heart is up there touching a cloud on a fifth sky.

THE SHRINE // NOUF ALHIMIARY

you’re at the crossroad between the two suitors. A woman pauses time. —lightening strikes—
The hell of a loved God or the heavens of charming Satan.
“what is love if you would not rot in hell for me?” 

god was in your form, the night you swam, naked. your skin looked different underwater, i’d drown attempting to breathe your essence. 

my body aches, it aches of perverseness. had i figured out just how to absorb your very soul — to encapsulate your divine truths within me. 

i drift as i marvel, seraphic as you are, blood passes through your arteries; Holy holy, holy blood. I’m at loss, lost in strands of your hair, i’d watch you forever underwater.  

***
cover art