I Stand by Your Ear Unseen Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Dipperide@aol.com A Poem The following poem is not for the faint of heart. As the RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan) website makes clear, the Northern Alliance is expected to be no better. During Iran's Islamist revolution, in one 3-year period, twenty-thousand (that's right, 20,000) women and girls were executed. Since the US-supported regime of the Taliban took power, the numbers in Afghanistan are equally mind-boggling. Jan Goodwin's book from 1993, "The Price of Honor", is very worth reading to get a full picture of the realities for women under Islamic fundamentalist regimes. When the most basic humanity of fully half of the human race is denied, and targeted for such astounding, barbaric assault, I shudder at how easily and ignorantly we surrender the human rights and civil liberties we have come to take so for granted. --bt (Bedi Begum was murdered by flogging at the order of the Taliban in July of 1999,one of 60 women to die as a result of flogging this year. This narrative combines the elements of several true stories about various Afghan women.) I Stand by Your Ear Unseen By Sue Silvermarie, a US supporter of RAWA 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. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytfem-11.25.01-22:10:14-11119