Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

In the Minefields, and: Lovelorn Story

2017; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ff.2017.0007

2151-7371

Suha Hassen,

Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East

In the Minefields, and: Lovelorn Story Suha Hassen (bio) In the Minefields I will hang the sun at our front door. My lover will be back tomorrow from the long war holding in his hands the evening sorrow and a veil from the moon. I will hang the sun at our front door because my lover will be back tomorrow from a long war. My lover promises to tell me all the anecdotes of the forgotten names, and corpses in the minefields. I will hang the sun at our front door and clean the bullets from our walls, I will name each one a star— millions of stars shine in our home— I will draw new black eyes and a new mouth. Oh, my lover will be back tomorrow from the war. [End Page 161] Lovelorn Story The shadow of the body is lonely in the coffin, melting in the desire, shivering from the deprivation. The grass roots are moaning over the gravestones While the GOD is wondering How could the stones have wounds? Lonely in the graves, The shadow of the body is wailing From the need of one night’s touch [End Page 162] Suha Hassen Suha Hassen is an American-Iraqi scholar, writer, and poet. She holds a PhD from Al-Nahrain University in Baghdad, and a Master’s degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Oregon State University, and is currently a first-year PhD student at the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. Previous field research in Iraq investigated how the Islamic State (ISIS) employed sexual violence and systematic rape as a weapon of war and a tool of genocide against women and children from minority groups in Iraq. Herself a war survivor, Hassen has drawn on her personal experiences of terror and subsequent internal displacement, diaspora, and immigration to the US in 2010 to motivate her to devote her academic research and poetry to end violence against civilians in war. Suha Hassen writes poetry as a way of healing from war trauma, documenting the stories of those often ignored by the media, and as a mode of resistance: “words have a soul, and the soul has tears, and these tears stem from the unforgettable memory of the pain.” She can be contacted at shassen@masonlive.gmu.edu. Copyright © 2017 Feminist Formations