This is the kind of stuff that floats around in my head in the middle of the night when I really should be sleeping.

She wakes up long before dawn because her husband will rise with the sun. The coffee must be ready, as well as hot bread. She lays out his clothes, shaves him and helps him dress. If she hesitates for a moment he beats her ‘til near death. The children know better than to disturb her while she prepares him for the day. They don’t want to be victims of his wrath. He gives her a few coins so she can go to the market. Off to work he goes, but still no peace. First she must prepare the children, dressing them and feeding them too. Then the house must be cleaned and clothes must be laundered and pressed each and everyday. When he comes home at night food must be ready for immediate serving. He yells at her and the children if it’s not like he planned. And even if the food is ready he yells anyway. He believes it is his job to keep her in place. Which he thinks is somewhere way below him. And if he is really in a mood then he’ll beat her too. Afterall, he is the man and it is his job to teach her how to live with life. Otherwise she might get too powerful and control him instead. His religion might call for it, demanding he beat her, that it is the will of God that he is the man and she is the wife. Or in this case his domestic slave.

As a little girl she lived in fear of her father too. She used to have to do so much work. Helping her mother wash the clothes and clean the house while her brothers went to school and played. When her parents took her to meet that man, even though she was only 14 and he was 35 she was happy. She thought here is my chance for freedom from my life. Her mother never spoke much except to yell, “hurry up, why are you taking so long, shhh…be quiet.” So at 14 she married, the happiest day of her life. And the next morning after the ceremony the beatings started. His brand of education, discipline of her mind. Soon she understood what was expected of her in order to hold back his anger. And when she got pregnant she thought “okay, maybe now he will go easy on me, 'cause surely he can’t expect me to work like a horse when I am carrying his child”. Only the beatings got worse until finally she gave up her, self. She stopped to exist as a human, and transformed into a thing.

She once asked her mother about why life was like this. And all her mother could do was cry and say “shhh…be quiet” and then pray. When she was in labor with her first child she cried to God, “please God, please make it a boy. I don’t want my daughter child to have to live like I do. And with each child she always begged for God to make it a boy, for girls have no place in this world of man.

For the person who wondered about my poem on courage and what it meant. Here is what it meant – women, live in the servitude of man. Not all women, just several hundreds of millions. Mostly Muslim women, women in Asia and Africa and South America. And women who live an impoverished life. And sometimes even women who live like queens. It is women who live with fear every day of their lives. Who pray to God not for life, but for death – to release them from their bonds.

When all women become free
Then the world will change.
But until then men will destroy
All that they see.

If you came here looking for a poem about love on this Valentines' Day, I am sorry to disappoint you but I have placed love under the same column as God on my spreadsheet on what I have learned about life. Right there under the heading “Things That Don’t Exist”.