Sarah's Egypt Diary

Excerpts from “Sarah’s Egypt Diary” (a long multi-section poem telling the story of her journey with Ibrahim to Egypt, and their ordeal with the sexual predator king there)

5 Dhu'l-Hijjah 1425 - Poem 5

By Mohja Kahf

I set out thinking honeymoon, thinking
Ibrahim, my beloved dyed-in-the-wool
old Mesopotamian, he’d go anywhere for me

*

We’re back now from Pharoah’s Egypt
Home from that god-awful
big-city vacation from hell
I’ve been through fire now and I am tired

Danger at every turn—would we get mugged?
Or arrested by the Pharoah’s cops
for being profiled as foreigners,
darkly Iraqi, worshippers of the wrong god

*
We get to the inn and sure enough,
Pharoah’s gendarmes show up there
The king demands our presence,
they say, and hustle us away

*
Abraham, why did you lie?
Whose progeny is destined
to increase and multiply,
to save yourself
you told the king (who’d kill
for other men’s wives)
that I was your sister,
not your wife—
What am I now to do
with my faith in you?
What are we all to do?

*
I see clearly now. Either
I give in to penny-ante rules and be the wife,
the little woman shrunk to fit,
the sister when convenient—

sit back quietly in service and become
a parody of me (although
when we are attacked by outside enemy,
I must spring to acts befitting
one born intelligent and free)

For that price, I get
a stunted sort of love
and safety, which is not
the same as peace

Or,
I can choose to keep
clean in me
the truth that I believe

I free my body and my mind—
but then I leave my Ibrahim open to attack
from tribes who hem us in, the tyrant king,
even our own community
(who’ll say my husband’s not a man
for not controlling me)

Either way, I lose

But I refuse.
This is a set-up.
You are cheats, your bargains frauds,
your scales are weighted,
you who profit by this power—
I refuse to buy and sell,
I refuse to trade with you.