Let Live Your Courage

This is a piece I wrote for the Stop the Violence Campaign run by UN  Women.  The three women I used span thousands of years.  Rabia Balkhi was a poet from Afganastan (in first millennium) who fell in love with a slave of the household and was pushed into the bathroom after having her artery severed by her own brother.  She proceeded to write her poems on the tiles with her own blood until she died. 

Tahirih, also a poet, was from Iran and spoke of equality and freedom for women in the mid nineteen century.  She was strangled and thrown down a well. 

The last women mentioned was a victim of the Rwanda massacre and had her body mutilated beyond comprehension.  You can read an account of her suffering in the acceptance speech by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) who were awarded the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for its work with populations in danger.  (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/article.cfm?id=708&cat=speech) 
I choose these women because their lives span over a thousand years and they represent the violence that women experience within the family, in society and in conflict zones.  When I have used the poet’s words these are shown in quotes.

Let Live Your Courage

Yielding her life to the sharp brutal blade
Thrust through pulsating artery
Rabia paints her poems of love
With blood red fingertips
On tiles cracked with age old patterns of control
She writes, “A true lover should be faithful to the end”
Another millennium passes and Tahirah pens her poems of love
That cry out her heart’s desire
Down centuries of time,
“This afflicted heart of mine has woven your love to the stuff of life. 
Strand by strand, thread to thread”
Eloquent of mind and body
She spoke of freedom
but roughly tightened silk choked the words
And throttled the tender throat
All that remains is the beauty of her memory
And her words of truth echoing yet.

And here and now a lacerated woman hacked beyond humanity
Lies on a blood reddened soil
Treated by a doctor who has only sutures to tie up what remains
His futile efforts to redeem what has already been lost
spills him into helpless despair and sobs.
So many more waiting for more
Than he can give, he is frozen
Helpless by the horror.
Then from the violated pieces that remain,
barely human, comes the woman’s voice
“Let live your courage!”
And her words of encouragement
In the midst of excruciating pain
Lifted him to action, echoed around the world.

May the words of those that suffer
Reach past your ears to heart and soul
Over centuries and millennium they cry out their loving call to action
“Let live your Courage!”