Songs My Enemy Taught Me

Joelle Taylor

• Publisher: Out Spoken Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780993103896
• eBook ISBN: 9781916046818
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Poesie

Songs My Enemy Taught Me is a collection of back alley poetry and flick knife tales detailing women's struggle against sexual terrorism and colonisation. Songs of independence. Songs of survival. Songs of uprising. Comprised of poetry, text messages, landays, letters and news flashes these are stories plucked from women's lips across the globe and re-imagined by award-winning poet, playwright, and author Joelle Taylor. Some stories are her own. Others are yours.

SONGS
OF
UPRISINGlandays
London 2017

SAMMAR POPAL

I am from Afghanistan and came to the UK in 2017. I live with my son. I was a teacher, head teacher and school principal in Afghanistan, and have written several volumes of landays in my mother tongue.

What do you want from me, enemy?

You destroyed my house, ate my country and killed my youth

I was born in a war torn country

The whole of our lives we have washed in a rain of tears

Please bring peace to my Afghanistan

Wave goodbye to the fight that has destroyed all our lives

May your red hands shatter, Taliban

The ones you used to rip in half my memories

The Taliban have forbidden love

Every lover is an enemy, every bed war

BASIRA HEEMAT

Basira, 25, left Afghanistan when she was 19. She lives in London with her two young children and volunteers with project admin at Afghan Association Paiwand. In the future she would like to build on her skills and gain employment.

I was born in holy land Mecca

My whole life I have cried like rain storms in the desert

Make peace your pathway, destroy borders

Get rid of segregation, the destroyer of homes

The white sorrow of your wedding night

The tears of the sky fell down on the mother of bride

The stones and plant life were not peaceful

Mountains were spitting fire in sorrow, volcano heart

The birds were crying in the night sky

Each night a new sorrow, each night a new bird crying

The summer has left and the storms have come

You were crying like the leaves in Autumn

Darkness drops across the open mouthed world

The sun has turned its back, faced away in bitter shame

Disappointed you were hurt and left

Abandoned and no one there to help or to guide you

There was raging fire deep in your heart

But you were melting like a candle into streams of blood

FATEMA S. HAWYDI

My name is Fatema and I have been a refugee for my whole life, therefore I do not know how it feels to have a home. He was my only home, but the war took him. It took my only home.

To be or not to be, no one cares

When death or life looks the same in the refugee camp

Do you want to be killed or to be killed?

How come I have never been given a real true choice?

Child protection laws do not apply

Where children can be used as a human shield

I’ve always wanted to be a boy

In a land where that is something you can be proud about

My mum desperately shuts her eyes

She doesn’t want to be the mother of a fourth girl child

Between love and war his love survived

But she lost it, all of it, between the bombed out cars

Please forgive me for not being there

And please forgive me for not softly holding your hand

The fag is on fire, who cares about the child?

No one reaches through rubble; no love, no hope or smile

RONA HEYDARI

I am from Afghanistan and came to the UK in 2010. I live with my family here. I came to the UK because of war. I am a pharmacist; I hope I can find a job.

God, everyone wants you to give

But I want you to take my fatigue and depression

How long should we mourn humanity?

Even God is tired of endless pain and cries for help

Hand in hand we should always fight on

Until we die we won’t stop our battle for freedom

Even my own dreams were restricted

I was forced to complete another man’s dream before mine

Landays are a traditional form of Afghan folk poetry which are chanted or sung. They are not written down but survive as an oral form, passed down the mother’s side of the family.

They are comprised of 24 syllables in total, 9 on the first line, and 13 on the second.

The Landay belongs specifically to the women of Afghanistan, and each of their poems are a quiet revolution in a land where women are forbidden to write poetry. They are one of the most extraordinary forms of spoken word, a hummed resistance. The word landay roughly translates into ‘short poisonous snake’, and that is precisely what they are: irreverent, bitter, sorrowful and above all resistant. I wanted to include newly commissioned Landays in this collection, and so led some poetry workshops with female Afghan refugees at Paiwand, an advocacy organisation working on behalf of all refugees from the region, irrespective of ethnicity.

It was an incredible experience. Moving, inspirational and at times hilarious. This is what real revolution looks...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Foreword
• SONGS OF SILENCE
• SONGS OF SURVIVAL
• SONGS OF UPRISING
• References
• Acknowledgements
• Thanks to:
• Bio
• Other titles by Out-Spoken Press: