Posted on 08/25/2011 7:55:22 AM PDT by flowerplough
On Tuesday, Google celebrated the birthday of Nazik al-Malaika, a wonderful female poet, by honoring her with a Google Doodle. Al-Malaika was widely known in the Arab world. She passed away in June 2007.
Her obituary in the NY Times described her as one of the Arab worlds most famous poets and one of a small group of Iraqi poets who broke away from classical Arab poetry, with its rigid metric and rhyme schemes. It also illustrated how her poetry often dealt with womens issues in brave and incredibly compelling ways, quoting from To Wash Disgrace, a poem about an honor killing:
"Oh mother, a rattle, tears and darkness
Blood gushed out, and the stabbed body trembled.
Oh mother! Heard only by the executioner
Tomorrow the dawn will come and roses will wake up
Youth and enchanted hopes will ask for her
The meadows and the flowers will answer:
She left to wash the disgrace.
The brutal executioner returns
And meets people
Disgrace! He wipes his knife
Weve torn it apart.
And returned virtuous with a white reputation."
As Shelby Knox has pointed out at Feministe, the number of times that Google has honored a woman in this way is appallingly low.
(Excerpt) Read more at feministing.com ...
Happy Veteran's Day, brave mujhadeen!
I wonder, do the feminists realize she is celebrating the honor killing of a girl in that poem?
are they sure it’s really and Arab girl this time, and not some dude in Colorado?
I’ll be interested to see what they do for 9/11. Last year they did nothing.
I believe the Iraqi lady’s attempting to employ irony, which is sometimes, to some, lost in translation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.