A sequence of landay couplets in the spirit (I hope) of Afghan women’s poetry, for the Scavenger Hunt.
Landay sequence
Those days are gone, when, where rivers run
beneath the shade of trees, is the place where love is spun.
There’s a lovers’ place, I’ll take you there,
but would you dare the damp, the leaves in your rumpled hair?
A man fights fake monsters on his phone
each woman fights real demons in the dark all alone.
The heart’s place is green as this spring day,
distant now, and blue as dreams, a blue ocean away.
Jane these are tremendous!! I especially like “A man fights fake monsters on his phone/each woman fights real demons in the dark all alone.” That one is amazing!!
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I’m pleased you liked that one. It seemed appropriate given what those women and girls are suffering.
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These are lovely, Jane, but the third one is especially good.
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Thank you xx
That seems to be the general opinion 🙂
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Like others, this is the one that stood out to me. I think most women understand it.
“A man fights fake monsters on his phone
each woman fights real demons in the dark all alone.”
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It’s the one I can imagine so many Afghan women whispering to one another. When are the self-righteous right-side-of-history mob going to start demonstrating for their rights, I wonder?
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Yes, I agree.
The women were abandoned.
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The women are always abandoned.
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True.
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I too have been thinking of the plight of women ignored all over the world. You have given them a voice. (K)
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The millions of women and children being starved/ massacred/raped by their fellow citizens in Sudan might like a bit of a shout-out from the flag-wavers too. I’ll wait.
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Yes, that too. Not to mention in Mexico. And all over South America for that matter. India. The list is endless.
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Our sympathies follow our ideologies. We cherry pick among the injustices, depending on whether the perpetrators are our friends or not.
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That’s so true. We can justify anything if it’s done by a member of our tribe.
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Look at the parents who beat up their kid’s teacher because s/he dared to tell the brat to be less disruptive in class.
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Well they drug a lot of disruptive kids here now. Diagnose them with ADHD and enrich the drug companies because they have to take the drugs forever. Heaven forbid they should try to actually find out what the child needs.
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In the bad old days, kids sat in rows in silence and didn’t give the teacher any trouble. They didn’t learn much and they tended to leave school as soon as possible, but they didn’t give lip, never mind physically assault the teachers. Everyone was more deferential then and it wasn’t a good thing. But nor is the individualism that allows kids to knife a teacher who says something they don’t like. There has to be some kind of happy medium.
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No middle ground anywhere.
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Hard to see where it is.
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