Pledge of Allegiance skipped, Muslim poem read at Boston school on 9/11

The principal of Concord Carlisle High School in Boston issued an apology Wednesday after a Muslim poem was recited over the intercom on the 12th anniversary of 9/11, and the Pledge of Allegiance was not. According to principal Peter Badalament, a “small number” of people were outraged at the poem, which was meant to promote “cross-cultural understanding,” (Skip) Mohja Kahf’s “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears,” tells a granddaughter’s account of watching her grandmother adhere to the religious Muslim custom of washing her feet five times a day

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to FReepers on behalf of the Admin Mods, and also to all fans of poetry.

As anyone familiar with Mohja Kahf’s (Arabic for "She whose calves are as large as thighs") wonderful poem will attest, it was originally written in the Muslim style of Mazahr-al-Suess.

This style of poetry involves a series of rhyming couplets in a meter sometimes unrecognizable to the unsophisticated western ear. But sadly, by some software malfunction at FR, Uncle Miltie's original posting of this masterful work, had every other rhyming line omitted.

The omission of every other line, rendered this ode to her grandmother's hygienic purification ritual into little more than meaningless twaddle.

With that in mind, I hereby present Mohja Kahf’s magnificent opus, restored to its original form:

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears
The one with the holes in the doors for the queers.

to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer, wudu,
Oh wudu, that voodoo, that you do.

because she has to pray in the store or miss
her one opportunity, to have a good piss.

(for) the mandatory prayer time for Muslims
is also the one time she's away from her husband.

She does it with great poise, balancing herself with one plump matronly arm
With a wish that some Christian, or Jew will be harmed.

against the automated hot-air hand dryer,
She's got less hair on her head than Rocky Bleier.

after having removed her support knee-highs
By Allah! She really SHOULD shave those thighs!

and laid them aside, folded in thirds,
I'm not kidding, those gams are practically FURRED!

and given me her purse and her packages to hold
[no wonder the old crone never seems to get cold.]

so she can accomplish this august ritual
while women around her complete their micturals.

and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares
She just knows there are pressure cookers on sale somewhere

Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown
'Cause let's face it. She looks like a clown

as they notice what my grandmother is doing,
instead of powdering herd face, nose, or poo-ing.

an affront to American porcelain,
Will someone please herd her goats and her horse in?

a contamination of American Standards
Might as well include all the stock in the barnyard.

by something foreign and unhygienic
by a woman scrubbing her feet so frenetic

requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray
and that's just for the animals there chewing their hay.

They fluster about and flutter their hands and I can see
That meter and rhyme are just not my fortee.

a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom
she's wishing they'd all disappear with a Kay-boom.

My grandmother, though she speaks no English,
(and grandpa has three other wives, so she's more or less singlish)

catches their meaning and her look in the mirror says,
"I'd like to stone you all to death, like the gays."

"I have washed my feet over Iznik tile in Istanbul
And they threw me out of that place, too.

"with water from the world’s ancient irrigation systems
and in the men's locker room of the Detroit Pistons.

"I have washed my feet in the bathhouses of Damascus
And I'll chop off your head if my ways you don't ass-kiss.

"over painted bowls imported from China
I've splashed fetid water on my mutilated vagina.

"among the best families of Aleppo
and even with Groucho, Harpo, and Zeppo.

"And if you Americans knew anything about civilization and cleanliness,
you be really aghast at my manners and manliness.

you’d make wider washbins, anyway
and you wouldn't allow cretins in your washbins to play."

My grandmother knows one culture—the right one,
[And as far as FReepers are concerned, she can bite One]

as do these matrons of the Middle West. For them,
My grandma can go home, and never come back again.

my grandmother might as well have been squatting
and taking a dump, with bacteria rotting

in the mud over a rusty tin in vaguely tropical squalor,
that's causing the regular patrons' faces to pallor.

Mexican or Middle Eastern, it doesn’t matter which,
[All of 'em pretty much are a b!tch.]

when she lifts her well-groomed foot and puts it over the edge.
That senile old dame is still wearing her keds.

“You can’t do that,” one of the women protests,
"Just watch me," she says, "I've got a suicide vest."

turning to me, “Tell her she can’t do that.”
"Better do what she says," say I, "or it's splat!"

“We wash our feet five times a day,”
She declares. (But what she won't say,
is that day only comes once a year
-- and in May)"

my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic:
It's haram for a woman like me to use Schick.

“My feet are cleaner than their sink.
she says, only kidding, and gives me a wink.

Worried about their sink, are they? I
Lived for twenty-five years in a hut like a sty.

(and it) should have been sweet
(but not once did hubby) worry about my feet!”

My grandmother nudges me, “Go on, tell them.”
To thank thank Allah they don't have to smell them!

Standing between the door and the mirror, I can see
a half dozen infidels taking a pee.

at multiple angles, my grandmother and the other shoppers,
and a couple of little white teeny-boopers

all of them decent and goodhearted women, diligent
Hey! There's my old bridge partner, Millicent!

in cleanliness, grooming, and decorum
though reading this poem in school surely will bore 'em.

Even now my grandmother, not to be rushed,
Has plunked herself down all the way to her tush.

is delicately drying her pumps with tissues from her purse
she's drawing it out: "in your face Christians!" so she'll never be terse.

For my grandmother always wears well-turned pumps
That sadly, accentate her camel-back humps

that match her purse, I think in case someone
thinks this poem is going somewhere -- he's a dumb-one.

Now she pulls herself out of the sink like a hippo
(stolen) from one of the best families of Aleppo.

(The security guard) Should run into her—here, in front of the Kenmore display
and grab her, and throw her, in the dryer all day.

I smile at the midwestern women
Will these stupid dhimmis give her what she's got comin?

as if my grandmother has just said something lovely about them
instead of playing Typhoid Mary, as she's raving and shout'en'.

and shrug at my grandmother as if they, had just apologized through me
they're just glad that her vest didn't go all "kabloom-ee."

No one is fooled, but I,
[who think poetry don't have to rhyme.]

hold the door open for everyone
Even old grammy, who weighs, like, a ton.

and we all emerge on the sales floor
as the genteel ladies stampede for the door.

and lose ourselves in the great common ground
of housewares on markdown.

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