> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.merip.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Poems for the Women of Egypt
- URL: https://www.merip.org/1979/11/poems-for-the-women-of-egypt/
- Published: 1979-11-24T17:02:23.000Z
- Updated: 2025-07-29T13:08:58.000Z
- Description: The Future and the Ancestor The dead’s right grain ls woven in our flesh within the channels of the blood Sometimes we bend beneath the fullness of ancestors. But the present that shatters walls, banishes boundaries and invents the road to come, rings on. Right in the center of our lives liberty
- Author: Nazik al-Mala’ika
- Tags: MER Article, Poetry, Women, #wp, #wp-post, Issue 82, #Articles

**The Future and the Ancestor**

The dead’s right grain  
ls woven in our flesh  
within the channels of the blood  
Sometimes we bend  
beneath the fullness of ancestors.

But the present that shatters walls,  
banishes boundaries  
and invents the road to come,  
rings on.

Right in the center of our lives  
liberty shines,  
begets our race  
and sows the salt of words.

Let the memory of blood  
be vigilant but never void the day.  
Let us precede ourselves  
across new thresholds.

—*Andrée Chedid*

**Honor**

I am a woman...  
I am from the faraway ruins in the east  
A woman who from the beginning  
With bare feet  
Has experienced the unquenched thirst of the land  
Searching for a drop of water  
A woman who from the beginning  
With bare feet  
Along with her skinny cow in the threshing field  
From dawn to dusk  
Has felt the weight of pain...

I am a woman  
A worker whose hands  
Turn the great machines of the factory  
Which each day tear to bits my strength  
In the threads of the wheels  
In front of my eyes...

I am a woman with hands full of wounds  
From the cutting blades of pain  
A woman whose body has been broken  
under your unlimited shameless  
Backbreaking work  
A woman whose skin is the mirror of the sun of the desert  
And whose hair smelis of factory smoke...

I am a woman  
A woman for whom  
In your shameful vocabulary  
There is no word  
Corresponding to my significance.

—*Marzieh Ahmadi Ooskwi*

**Insignificant Woman**

When she closed her eyes  
No face faded, no lips quivered  
Doors heard no retelling of her death  
No curtain was lifted to air the room of grief  
No eyes followed her coffin  
to the end of the road  
Only a memory of a lifeless form passing in some lane.

The word echoed in alleyways  
Hushed sounds, finding no shelter,  
Settled in a secluded den.  
A moon mourned  
In silence.

Night, unconcerned, gave way to morning  
Daylight crept in with the milk cart  
and a call to fasting  
A meager cat mewing  
Amidst the shrill of vendor’s cries  
Boys squabbling  
throwing stones.  
Muddy waters spilling  
along the gutters  
As the wind carried foul smells  
To rooftops.  
Oblivion.

—*Nazik al-Mala’ika*