A room of one's own

.

 

Nobody can guess

 

What I say when I am silent,

 

Whom I see when I close my eyes,

 

How I am carried away when I am carried away,

 

What I search for when I stretch out my hands.

 

Nobody, nobody knows

 

When I am hungry, when I take a journey,

 

When I walk, and when I am lost.

 

And nobody knows

 

That my going is a return

 

And my return is an abstention,

 

That my weakness is a mask

 

And my strength is a mask,

 

And that what is coming is a tempest.

 

 

 

 

 

They think they know

 

So I let them think,

 

And I happen.

 

 

 

 

 

They put me in a cage so that

 

My freedom may be a gift from them,

 

And I have to thank them and obey.

 

But I am free before them, after them,

 

With them, without them.

 

I am free in my suppression, in my defeat.

 

My prison is what I want!

 

The key to the prison may be their tongue,

 

But their tongue is twisted around my desire's fingers,

 

And my desire they can never command.

 

 

 

 

 

I am a woman.

 

They think they own my freedom.

 

I let them think so,

 

And I happen.

 

 

(JOUMANA HADDAD)

 

(Translated by Issa J. Boullata)

 

 

 

 

.

Done