Guest guest Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 With Love nicole ********************************************************************** Abandoned... Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues May 30, 2009 What a surreal evening...bloody hell, I still am coming to terms with it. It started off on a smooth note and degenerated into the all too familiar - hmmm,what shall I call it ? I don't know, you name it for me... I went out with Z. for dinner. Z. remarked that he found me " absent " at times, tonight...I was unaware of being " absent " , but then sometimes am unaware of too many things...so I asked him, - You feel am not present enough ? - No, it's not that you're not present enough, it's that at times you're in another place, a place where you seem unreachable...where do you go to ? He caught me off guard... - I go to where my heart is. Giving him an open ended reply -- for him to figure out... I think the very powerful dream I woke up with, left me in some limbo place...and I carried that feeling with me all day. I dreamt I was in what looked like a hospital ward and at times a huge prison. The hospital ward was full of bare beds, rows of them...all dark grey. And the prison was made of endless rows of cells...all dark grey. I saw myself running from the far end of one corridor to another, in the hospital/prison, running from one end to another, totally lost, totally distressed by what I was seeing... The corridors were being multiplied as I ran through them, they looked like some labyrinth with no way out, and I felt caught in the walls and I saw no exit...In that hospital/prison were thousands of women... Thousands crammed together, sitting, standing, all silent...young, old, pregnant, childless, married, single...all types... I asked someone, I said " Who are these women? " And this faceless voice replied. " They are Iraqi women, waiting " , " Waiting ? " And the voice said " Yes, waiting...they are abandoned women. " The word abandoned stuck in my mind all day...Abandoned, abandonment...Terrible feeling that feeling of abandon, terrible...a frightening abyss. Have you ever felt abandoned ? I thought about abandonment all day...I dug it out from my insides, for it was lurking there, waiting to be acknowledged...to be delivered... I thought about it deeply, contemplated it, kept it beside me all day, and rocked it as if one rocks a baby... One cannot be abandoned unless one was attached...one cannot abandon unless one had in prior " possessed " that " object " one abandons...there is no abandonment if there is no attachment. " Object " and " possess " are not used in any pejorative sense here. They are used in a symbolic and visceral sense...and am not expecting you to understand it all either. I am trying to come to grips with it myself, coming to grips with that collective feeling of abandonment as symbolised in the dream...but the dream spoke of women, of Iraqi women. Someone has abandoned the Feminine...someone has cut the umbilical cord, radically severed it from the Feminine...in Iraq. What is the Feminine traditionally associated with ? Nurture, Warmth, Attachment, Wholeness, Desire, Compassion, Love, Nourishment, Creativity, Matter - The Body, Sensuality, Life Giving, Protection, Tranquility, Sakinah... And these Iraqi women, this Feminine has been abandoned, waiting...it is caught/detained in a hospital ward, in a Sickness, in cells, in one huge collective Prison, and it is waiting for...waiting for what ? It is waiting for Deliverance. It is waiting to be delivered from... Delivered from the clutches, from the claws of an Occupation, that has essentially raped the Feminine in Iraq. An occupation that has literally imprisoned the Feminine in cells and in hospital wards...an occupation where all are accomplices in the Abandonment of the Feminine...in the abandonment of Iraqi women. A very Masculine occupation, again on a symbolic level and maybe not so symbolic, that draws its strength, its force, its continuity, from severing the Feminine -- by detaining it, keeping it paralyzed, mute, immobilized, in waiting .... in waiting... Who will deliver the Feminine in Iraq ? Where is the Midwife of Deliverance? Picture/Poster : Ishtar Delivering. :: Article nr. 54704 sent on 30-may-2009 05:12 ECT www.uruknet.info?p=54704 Link: arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2009/05/abandoned.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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