Zohra
Saed
Introduction: Poetry is one of the strongest forces of Afghan culture. We learn our traditions, our manners, and our religion through poetry. The folklorist Margaret Mills called Afghanistan, “The most literary illiterate society.” While the majority of our grandmothers could not read or write, they learned classical and modern Persian poetry through the rich oral tradition and passed it down to their children. Our kitchen was always buzzing with gossip and poetry, religion and fairytales, philosophy and recipes. For Afghans, poetry belongs to the average person and so in this collection you won’t see any professional poets. Instead you have housewives, students, scholars, and doctors writing poetry. Many of these poets have learned English as a second language, yet joyfully they experiment with their adopted language. Afghan women’s poetry is about displacement and rebuilding. As a result the poetry is fragmented. Dari words are misplaced and float within the English lines. The poetry is haunted with longing and gazing out from windows, which are portholes back to some sliver of Afghanistan. Afghan women’s poetry is also hopeful, promising to return to heal the war-torn land and within these promises one can sense the guilt of leaving the others behind. If women are the true chroniclers of war, since it is we who survive, then the wars in Afghanistan mark each poem written by these Afghan refugee poets from across the United States and Australia.
Bio: Zohra Saed was born in Jalalabad, Afghanistan in 1975. A Brooklyn-based poet, Saed has performed her poetry over the past few years at various New York City venues such as Cornelia Street Cafe, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Tribes Gallery, the Asia Society Museum, the American Museum of Natural History and over public radio. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and online magazines. She served as Managing Editor from 1997-1999, part of the founding editorial board, at the Afghan Communicator: Voice of the Young Generation magazine. She has her MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College and is pursuing her Ph.D in English Literature, analyzing British and American literature about Afghanistan, at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She teaches Arab American literature through the Asian American Studies Program at Hunter College. Her most recent project is co-editing the first anthology of Afghan writings to be published in English.
Lida Abdullah -- “Kuchis,” “Blink”
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