Foot-note on Megara...........the "Dance of Persephone"

I couldn't help but laugh when a few days ago I read  the article below in the Feminism and Religion Blog, which I subscribe to.  In the previous post I explored the idea of "marga" and synchronicity which began when I was writing a little article to submit to the very same Blog (the article, of course, was about Spider Woman, the great connector of all things)  In the course of writing my last post I included in the post something about Megara.  

Following those footprints........and I take the liberty of copying here the fascinating article by Laura Shannon.  Laura Shannon has been researching and teaching traditional women’s ritual dances since 1987. She is considered one of the ‘grandmothers’ of the worldwide Sacred / Circle Dance movement and gives workshops regularly in over twenty countries worldwide. Laura holds an honours degree in Intercultural Studies (1986) and a diploma in Dance Movement Therapy (1990).  She has also dedicated much time to primary research in Balkan and Greek villages, learning songs, dances, rituals and textile patterns which have been passed down for many generations, and which embody an age-old worldview of sustainability, community, and reverence for the earth. Laura’s essay ‘Women’s Ritual Dances: An Ancient Source of Healing in Our Times’,  was published in Dancing on the Earth. Laura lives partly in Greece and partly in the Findhorn ecological community in Scotland.

Dance of Persephone: The Trata of Megara by Laura Shannon 

BY LAURA SHANNON on MAY 7, 2016

Eleusis

In a previous post on FAR I explored Greek Easter customs which interweave Christian and pre-Christian beliefs.  Today I would like to take a closer look at one of these customs, the women’s ritual dance known as Tráta, ceremonially performed on ‘Bright Tuesday,’ the Tuesday after Easter. Versions of Tráta survive in the towns of Mégara and Elefsina just west of Athens, on the island of Salamína directly across from them, and in the surrounding area as far as Thebes.

Elefsina, of course, is Eleusis, where for over 2,000 years the Eleusinian Mysteries enacted the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone’s descent to the Underworld. Choral dance was a central part of the ceremonies at Eleusis – as at other sacred sites including Delphi, Knossos, Athens, and Vravrona – and the ‘Well of the Beautiful Dances’ can still be seen at the archaeological site. It is a a visible reminder of the circle dancing which was a part of the initiatory experience, bringing cosmic order – symbolised by the circle – into the human world. This is still one of the functions of the Tráta as performed today.

Eleusis – ‘Well of the Beautiful Dances’

Temple relief of Demeter with grain, poppies, snakes, from Eleusis.

Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries involved the understanding that an ear of grain first must die in order to give new life (whether planted as seed, baked into bread, or made into beer). The phenomenon of death leading to life through the medium of a sacred marriage was celebrated in other archaic springtime festivals, such as those of Aphrodite / Adonis, Cybele / Attys, and Isis / Osiris), from which the Resurrection story of Christian Easter is directly descended. I believe something of these ancient customs survive in the women’s Tráta dance, whose every detail hints at the story of Persephone’s descent and return.

Women dancing the Tráta at Vilia on Mount Kithairon, Attiki, Greece.

In Megara, the annual ritual of the Tráta is one of the most significant events in the village. Women of all ages gather at the upper square, near the tiny church of ‘Saint John the Dancer’ with its miraculous spring believed to grant fertility. The women’s costumes used to feature strong black, white and red elements, the colours of the Triple Goddess and the three central figures of the Eleusinian drama (Hecate, Demeter and Persephone).

The old style of costume from Megara with strong black, white and red colours

Now they are rich in silk, satins, and gold embroidery, with deep red aprons embroidered with flowing floral and vegetation motifs. The long, pale silk veils – symbol of initiation and the threshold between the worlds –  are embroidered with fertility symbols including wheat, sign of Demeter, and pomegranates, traditional food of the dead and symbol of prosperity and abundance chiefly associated with Persephone.

Silk and gold veil (bólia) from Salamína with design of enclosed pomegranates

Velvet jacket (zipoúni) of Mégara with downwards-facing Goddess embroideries

The zipoúni or velvet jacket is richly embroidered in gold, and the sleeves feature the pre-Christian motif of the sun-headed Goddess; unusually, she is depicted head-down instead of right-side-up, as if indicating the direction of descent to the underworld.  The overall effect closely resembles the women on the frescoes in the 4th C. BCE Tomb of the Dancing Women in Apuglia, Italy.

Fresco from the ‘Tomb of the Dancing Women’, 4th C BCE, Apuglia, Italy

The kinetic motif of ascent and descent central to the myth of Persephone is dramatically emphasised by the pronounced zigzag of the dance pattern, visually mirrored in the basketweave handhold, and expressed again in the way the dance spirals completely in and out as you can see in the video.  The Tráta is one of the few traditional Greek dances which do this, in a labyrinthine movement of deepening and emerging which magnifies the inwards-outwards, ascending-descending theme.

In a reversal of normal procedure, young unmarried girls lead the older married women in the dance line: the daughter is the agent in this danced symbolic journey.  Among the mature women at the back of the line are the strongest singers, those able to sing loudly enough for the dancers at the front to hear, even when the circle is large and the dance line snakes and spirals around.

This spiralling movement is stunning to watch. In Mégara in the late 1940s, Kevin Andrews described it thus: ‘A long line of a hundred and fifty to two hundred women with gorgeous clothing holding hands across each other’s waist, simply moving slowly round and round the square… wearing head cloths of white silk falling in long folds over their backs and shoulders, plum-coloured velvet jackets tight and stiff with a profusion of gold embroidery, with lace at the cuffs, strings upon strings of coins hung across the breast, and silk aprons heavily embroidered over their long skirts that swirled over their gold-slippered ankles… There was no music anywhere.’

Rennell Rodd, in 1968, wrote that ‘the step appears to be extremely simple, not to say monotonous, and yet the precision with which it is accomplished, the simultaneousness of every movement, cannot be easy to acquire; while the general effect of these serpentining chains of linked figures, in their bright dresses and floating veils, advancing, retiring, and winding round, is particularly graceful and pretty.’

The women’s Tráta today still resembles the pictures painted by these witnesses of 50 and 75 years ago, but as with most Greek folk customs, major changes are underway.  John Tomkinson reports that the dancers used to ornament their songs with strange low twittering sounds like that of swallows (also a symbol of Persephone, and like her, associated with the returning spring) but the women no longer do this. By custom the Tráta was accompanied by the women’s own a cappella singing, yet now the mayor of Mégara hires an orchestra of male musicians to accompany the women. And whereas historically the women’s Tráta was the only dance permitted on this day, now boys’ dance groups come on at intervals to perform other Greek dances – Syrtos, Kalamatianos, Tsamikos – turning the ritual into a kind of performance complete with speeches by dignitaries, sellers of peanuts and balloons, and similar distractions.

However, even with all of these changes, the dance still expresses something valuable on behalf of those who watch, and for many the Tráta of Mégara remains a unique and important touchstone of the Easter festival. Each time I have gone, I have been touched by the powerful sense of rightness and peace which comes over the crowd as the women’s ritual dance unfolds before them, bringing a sense of wholeness and relief, just as in ancient times.

https://feminismandreligion.com/2016/05/07/dance-of-persephone-the-trata-of-megara-by-laura-shannon/

Recommended reading:

Shannon, Laura. “Ritual Dance in Greece, Then & Now,” 2011. http://laurashannon.net/articles/49-ritual-dance-in-greece-then-a-nowShannon, Laura. “Women’s Ritual Dances: An Ancient Source of Healing in our Time”. In Dancing On The Earth: Women’s Stories Of Healing Through Dance. J. Leseho and S. McMaster. 1st ed. Findhorn Press, 2011. 138-157.

"Marga"........Following Footprints in the Mythic Sand

Recently I lent the book "Women Who Run With The Wolves"  by Clarissa Pinkola Estes to a friend staying at my house.  As she was reading it, I was working on a little article called  "Spider Woman's Hands" for the Feminism and Religion Blog.  She returned the book to me, with the comment that I should re-read it myself, that it would help me to do so.  An hour or so later I picked it up, and opened the book at random, and read the text that my eyes immediately fell on.  Here's what it was (truly) :

"What are soul needs?  They lie in the two realms of nature and creativity.  In these realms lives Na'ashje`'ii Asdza`a`, Spider Woman, the Navajo creation Goddess who gives psychic protection to those who seek her.  She is in charge of teaching the soul both protection and the love of beauty." (page 196)

What are the odds, to open a book at random thusly?  I thought of the concept of Marga after I read that, the archetypal/mythic strands in the web that lead us on,  refresh our vision of  the links.  

The "Blog sphere" has been a continuing source of information and inspiration.  In 2011 I  received a fascinating correspondence from Robur D'Amour, who shared with me his insights about "Marga", having read some of my own posts on synchronicity. 

Marga is a term I had not run across before, a concept that resonates  with what I've fancifully called "conversations with the world". And to me, those conversation are founded upon a mythic language.

I was pleased that Robur  kindly gave me permission to reproduce rich information from his site. http://roburdamour.blogspot.com/2010/05/marga.html.  I have not heard from him in years, but remain grateful for his musings.

"'Marga' is a term that means following a path of signs or symbols that lead a person to their spiritual self. Marga is a bit like finding one's way through a labyrinth, by reading signs that are given to you by the unconscious."

Jung believed that what mattered in life, to him, was to find his spiritual identity. He believed that a person could do this by leading what he termed a 'symbolic life'. Jung wrote:

“when people feel they are living the symbolic life, that they are actors in the divine drama... That gives the only meaning to human life; everything else is banal and you can dismiss it. A career, producing of children, are all maya (illusion) compared to that one thing, that your life is meaningful.”

I think that this idea is the same thing that Joseph Campbell, who was a great admirer of Jung, refers to as 'marga'. It's a way of living, without following any particular creed or any rules worked out and written down by someone else, other than paying attention to what is presented to you by Fate, the Goddess, God, or the unconscious. In The Hero's Journey (p45) Campbell writes:

"Adolf Bastian, a German anthropologist, has meant a great deal to me with just this main idea. The common themes that come out of the collective unconscious he calls elementary ideas.... In India, in art criticism, the elementary ideas are called 'marga', the path. Marga is from a root word 'mrg', which refers to the footprints left by an animal, and you follow that animal. The animal you are trying to follow is your own spiritual self. And the path is indicated by mythological images. Follow the tracks of the animal and you will be led to the animal's home. Who is the animal? The animal is the human spirit. So, following the elementary ideas, you are led to your own deepest spiritual source."

 A snippet of that piece can be read on Google books: The Hero's Journey (Marga).  In practical terms, this means paying attention to what we see in the world around ourselves, and in particular to symbols presented to us, in dreams and the things we come across in our daily lives. The symbols we see around us are presented to us by - Fate, the Goddess, God, the unconscious, or whatever name you like to give to the thing that we cannot see, but what determines 'what happens next'. 

This is the entry for marga, from a Sanskrit dictionary. Following the links in a trail of symbols that are presented to us by the unconscious, amounts to finding one's way through a labyrinth, by reading the signs. Labyrinths and mazes were common features in Elizabethan gardens."

What was interesting to me particularly in this 2011 correspondance was a kind of synchronistic overlay ..... a "crossing of Margas".  He wrote that:

"The marga (path of symbols) that I seem to have been unwittingly following is a very curious one, the odd re-occurrence of names that have  served as footprints along the way  - names similar to "Marga" that represented been syncronistic touchstones.   I originally seemed to connect the word marga with Megara, a name that  was popularised as the heroine in a Disney version of Hercules. It's only a film for children, but Megara is a very vivid anima archetype.......Megara was originally a Greek word for a fissure in the ground used for sacred rites connected with beliefs about the underworld (the unconscious) and Persephone-Hecate."

This was quite amazing to me, as twenty years prior I found myself obsessed with writing the only short story/novel I've ever written.  The novel, The Song of Medusa, ......... an excerpt can be found here.  It was  inspired by Riane Eisler's Chalice and the Blade and a desire to envision the world of the Goddess, how it might have been in pre-history, and might manifest in today's world.  But in the course of the "flow" of the writing, an ancient fictional priestess emerged, a "Singer" who chanted, prophesized, and "spoke with the voice of the Earth" in trance  by going into sacred  caves and fissures.  I did not know at the time about the ways the Oracle of Delphi became entranced, only learning of this later.  And, the novel was developed around the Persephone/Hades myth.  

Twenty years later, via this correspondance, I learn about Megara.  It seems, once again, that in the course of opening to the creative process, we do indeed open to the collective mind.  

And the footprints in the sand, glimmering in the light of Marga,  can reveal themselves, leading us on.

Happy Beltaine!

Once again, the world is waking up and blooming and the power of love and fertility is running like blood and sap and electricity throughout all the land.  Twas a time when May Day, and the Rites of Spring, were looked forward to widely, and celebrated with the greatest of enthusiasm!  The tradition of the Rites of Spring (Beltane) and the Sacred Marriage go very far back indeed, and are found in ancient Sumaria in the union of Inanna and Dumuzi, and more recently, for millenia throughout Northern Europe and the British Isles.  It's rather extraordinary, if one thinks about it or even is aware of it, that this important celebration was removed from the calendar and culture by the Church, and replaced with "international workers day", or simply buried as much as possible in the compost of myth, co-option, and turning something joyful and fundamental to nature and the Goddess into something "evil".  Witness the famous "ride of Lady Godiva" which I wrote about a few years back.

There is a wonderful U.K. Blog, (below) from which I take the liberty of copying writings on Beltaine lore.  BLESSED BELTANE TO ALL!



http://celestialelfdanceoflife.blogspot.com/2011/03/beltane-blessing-beannachadh-bealtain.html

The Beltane Festival

Beltane or Beltane is the Gaelic name for the festival that begins on April the 30th or Beltane's eve and continues on 1st May and is a celebration of purification and fertility. The name originates from the Celtic god, Bel - the 'bright one', and the Gaelic word 'teine' meaning fire, giving the name 'bealttainn', meaning 'bright fire'. Marking the beginning of the Summer season with the lighting of two great bon-fires on Beltane's eve signifies a time of purification and transition, these fires may be made of the nine sacred woods, Alder, Ash, Birch, Hawthorn, Hazel, Holly, Oak, Rowan and Willow.

Heralding in the season in the hope of a good harvest later in the year, Beltane festivals were accompanied with ritual acts to protect the people from any harm by Otherworldly spirits.

Significantly, as the Goddess (Brigid) moves through her various phases, Beltane sees the womanly aspect of the Summer Goddess banish the Old Crone aspect of the Winter Goddess in readiness for the maternal time and the fruits of nature to follow.

As this is one of the magic turning points of the Sacred Seasons, the veil between worlds is thought to be especially thin, and as a result many of the Fairy Host, the Sidhe and the Tuatha De Danann may be seen crossing between the worlds.  Particularly, the Faery Queen is thought to travel about on this night and if you gaze too long on her enchanted beauty she may whisk you away to live in her Other realms outside of time for an eternity.  The Faery Queen also represents the May Queen, although in practice the honor is usually carried out by young women who are soon to be married.

For the May Day is the great day, 

Sung along the old straight track. 

And those who ancient lines did ley 

Will heed this song that calls them back.

........Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull.

The May Queen at Beltane

Along with her May King, mythically a Jack in The Green, the Green Man or Horned God, is to take part in the Great Rite and so Open the way for the Summer. This is the Sacred Marriage of the God and Goddess, often reenacted by a symbolic union during which the Athame (magical knife symbolizing male energy) is placed by the King of May into the Chalice (Sacred Cup symbolizing female energy) held by the Queen of the May.  For a more detailed account of how this ritual was enacted in earlier time, I refer the reader to Marrion Zimmer Bradley's moving account in her fiction The Mists of Avalon.

Following this union which serves to Open the way to the Summer Lands, festivities ensue, particularly that of dancing around the May Pole. The May Pole itself is a symbol of the union of the God and the Goddess, as the red ribbons represent the fertility of the Goddess, the white represent the fertility of the God. Men begin the weaving by dancing under the upheld ribbon of the first women facing them, accompanied by music, drums beating or chanting. The dancers move forward, stepping alternately over and under each person who’s dancing toward them. The dance continues until the Maypole is completely wrapped, then the ribbons are tied off and the wreath from the top is tossed to the earth to bring its gathered power into the ground.

Whilst such public festivals are not as widespread as they once were, famously at Padstow in Cornwall there still is held an annual 'Obby-Oss' day, which is believed to be one of the oldest survivng fertility rites in the United Kingdom.   St. Ives and Penzance in Cornwall are now also seeing a revival of similar public festivities.


Beltane Lore

During Medieval times, a man might also propose marriage by leaving a hawthorn branch at the door of his beloved on the first day of May. If the branch was allowed to remain at her door, it was a signal that the proposal was accepted. If it was replaced with a cauliflower, the proposal was turned down.

The Celtic Moon month of Hawthorn is the time for lovers to attend to matters of the heart, as the Celtic fire festival of Beltane heralds the start of summer.  Crosses of birch and rowan twigs were hung over doors on the May morning as a blessing and protection, and left until next May day.
The dew on the May day morning is believed to have a magical potency - wash your face and body in it and you will remain fair all year.

Going 'A-Maying' meant staying out all night to gather flowering hawthorn, watching the sunrise and making love in the woods, also known as a 'greenwood marriage'

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight, Or he would call it a sin; But we have been out in the woods all night, A-conjuring Summer in! 

Old Poetry, Same Story

LEARNING ABOUT FRENCH GARDENS


Here it is, Eden
green and breathing mass
so many voices
it was not ours to make a Versailles of it,
rather
a way must be found to walk in it.
Let us not domesticate
make a barnyard of  beauty,
but let us
be brave enough.

(1971)


WHALE POEM

Following a rite of passage
north to south
to mate, bear young,
the great plankton eaters
pass slowly
pass the ancient way
filtering the ocean for its wealth.

    they kill the whale
    for oil, and various
    household purposes
    soap products, with which hands
    are washed clean

the great heart
can pump the water read
for 500 feet
the last thrust
of  pain
stirs the water
into turbulence that spreads out
a Mandela of loss
and falls on the coast
of Alaska.

    a blue whale was washed ashore
    in Maine
    they brought their cameras
    beach blankets and bee bee guns
    came to see
    this antediluvian creature
    laid to rest
    some left initials behind
    "JW was here"
    carved into the gray mass
    with pocket knives.

     1972

OCEAN PIECE

Think of this song

this song in you

    what is it?

what is this music you carry?

Think of this song in you

standing at the mouth

    mouth of the ocean at dark

into the darkness this song

    the ocean makes

one thought, an opening and  

singing the ocean, I pass

hold this song to you

it is not your own

you are a part of it

Earth Day - "Green Hands"

I will sing of the well-founded Earth, mother of all, eldest of all beings.She feeds all creatures that are in the world, all that go upon the goodly land,all that are in the path of the seas, and all that fly; all these are fed of her store.

Homeric Hymn to Gaia

Earth Day, but truth be told, all days should be Earth Day, because our Mother Gaia is the greater life we live within, the greater life we have the privilege of being each a tiny part of.  

I found myself thinking about the many "Green Hands/Earth Hands" sculptures I've made over the years, an image that occurs over and over for me.  Rooted in the Earth, greening and flowering in our creativity and the works of our hands.  I guess, after all, each of them is a kind of blessing and a prayer.

“'What is life?' is a linguistic trap. To answer according to the rules of grammar, we must supply a noun, a thing. But life on Earth is more like a verb. It is a material process, surfing over matter like a slow wave. It is a controlled artistic chaos, a set of chemical reactions so staggeringly complex that more than 4 billion years ago it began a sojourn that now, in human form, composes love letters and uses silicon computers to calculate the temperature of matter at the birth of the universe.”

Lynn Margulis, Ph.D., collaborator with James Lovelock in the Gaia Hypothesis

“Psychologists have not begun to ponder the emotional toll of the loss of fellow life.  Nor have theologians  reckoned the spiritual impoverishment  that extinction brings. To forget what we had is to forget what we have lost.  And to forget what we have lost means never knowing what we had to begin with."

Mark Jerome Walters, The Nature Conservancy (1998)

"Wildness we might consider as the root of the authentic spontaneities of any being. It is that wellspring of creativity whence comes the instinctive activities that enable all living beings to obtain their food, to find shelter, to bring forth their young: to sing and dance and fly through the air and swim through the depths of the sea. This is the same inner tendency that evokes the insight of the poet, the skill of the artist and the power of the shaman."

Thomas Berry

"This is a dark time, filled with suffering and uncertainty. Like living cells in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So don’t be afraid of the anguish you feel, or the anger or fear, because these responses arise from the depth of your caring and the truth of your interconnectedness with all beings."

Joanna Macy

Sherry Glasser takes on Mother Earth

 

 If you have never encountered Sherry Glasser and her personification of Mother Earth ("So, ah, how exactly do you think you got here without a Mother?") here's a beginning!  Sherry is well known in Northern California, and this performance of Oh My Goddess was presented at  Fort Bragg Town Hall, for the Ocean Protection Coalition Save The Whales Event in May of 2010.  Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/xkztSqqBSO4

The Afghan Women's Writing Project & New Documentary

Writing began for me as an escape from my burqa,

 an escape from my most painful moments. – Pari

Last week I attended a benefit screening of FRAME BY FRAME, a new film by Alexandria Bombach and Mo Scarpelli.  It was such a moving and well made film, that deeply revealed the courage of four Afghani photo journalists, one a woman, another an artist who won a Pulitzer prize.  It tell so poignantly not only the story of these artists, dedicated to telling the stories of those who cannot speak, very often at danger to their own lives, but also the healing vitality of the arts in the face of repression and tyranny.  I highly recommend this film, and highly recommend checking out and supporting if one can the organization it was screened for, the AFGHAN WOMEN'S WRITING PROJECT.  

I went to high school in Afghanistan, as my father worked for USAID, in the days before the deposition of the King, good days of prosperity and modernization  for that war torn country.  It is hard for us, especially for women, to imagine what has happened there under the tyranny of the Taliban - the Afghan Women's Writing Project is an Internet based group of volunteer teachers and networkers who assist women in the country to share and develop their writings - to tell their stories through poetry and fiction. For many of these women it is a vital lifeline, and their words are beautiful and heart-rending.

Photo by Lorenzo Tomada

Live Today

What if I die tomorrow?
Nothing is so easy.
I don’t live in yesterday
because it is gone.
I don’t live in the future
because it is not here yet.
It will come, whether I am alive or not 
I live today. It is the moment!
Live today,
Not the regrets of yesterday,
Not the worries of tomorrow…
Enjoy the moment,
The smile, the tea, the food,
The dance, the song, the walk
Enjoy the love and existence.
Live in today
Forget yesterday and tomorrow.
They are gone or not here yet. 

By Raha

http://awwproject.org/

"When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, taking a photo was a crime. After the regime fell from power in 2001, a fledgling free press emerged and a photography revolution was born. Now, as foreign troops and media withdraw, Afghanistan is left to stand on its own, and so are its journalists. Set in a modern Afghanistan bursting with color and character, FRAME BY FRAME follows four Afghan photojournalists as they navigate an emerging and dangerous media landscape—reframing Afghanistan for the world, and for themselves. Through cinema vérité, intimate interviews, powerful photojournalism, and never-before-seen archival footage shot in secret during the Taliban regime, the film connects audiences with four humans in the pursuit of the truth."

“A piercing, poignant and—as befits its subject—beautifully composed exploration of the challenges and responsIbilities faced by photojournalists in Afghanistan’s post-Taliban free press.” –Variety

https://youtu.be/w6dkvb4_ZlQ

A Five Kilometer Walk to School

by AWWP | April 14, 2016 

Last December, my family held a graduation party for me and my siblings. Alia and I had graduated high school and my elder sister, Gullafroz, and my elder brother, Arif, graduated from university.

At the end of the party, as I was serving tea to everyone, my auntie called me to talk. She began, “Look you are graduated now, for example, you learned everything and you are smart now.” She said “for example” to make fun of me. Every time my auntie came to our home, she always said school was not a good option and advised my sisters and me to get married rather than go to school.

I was searching for my sisters from the corner of my eye; they were at a side of the room talking to each other. They smiled back and rolled their eyes—meaning they had already heard the lecture.

“When I was your age,” she said, coming close to look straight into my eyes as if she was telling the world’s biggest secret, “I was married and had a child. My in-laws were so happy to have me as their son’s bride. You have to marry soon because you are young and quick. I was young once too, and I could finish my house chores faster than anyone else.”

I said to myself, “I can do math faster than those house chores.”

She continued talking about her early life. But I was not listening. My mind was on a memory from Kandahar.

After I finished third grade at school in Kabul, my father found a job in Kandahar and the whole family had to move there. It was mid-December when we arrived. We had to live in a small apartment with two tiny square rooms and a square yard. A tiny bathroom was on one side and it shared a wall with the kitchen, which only had room for one person to cook while standing.

There was a girls’ school about three blocks away from our home, which my sisters and I attended. I really liked my school. I wore a long black dress down to my knees and black pants that I pulled high so that my ankles could be seen. My ankles were whiter than those of the Pashtun girls I saw. I really wanted them to see my ankles. I thought they would be jealous of my white feet; instead they looked at us as if looking at something dirty. And of course, we had to wear the white headscarves. Gulafroz was covered in black from head to toe since she was older. I ironed my uniform every night before going to sleep and polished my black sandals.

One summer morning, I got dressed and took my pink umbrella to shield my head from the sun although it was only 6:30 a.m. and the sun had not risen yet. When my sisters and I arrived in front of the school gate, there were two men standing there. They looked like tall, long birds with wide eyes. To see them, I had to raise my head high and move my umbrella to the side. They were frowning.

One of them asked, “Almond-eyed people, where are you going?” The other one spoke in a Pashto accent. I could not understand all the things he said, but I understood this: “Go back. School is closed. Go back home. Never again, no female school.” The two men exchanged some words in Pashtu and then burst out laughing.

One of the men was dressed in a dark brown pirhan tumban, the traditional dress for men. He had dark eyes, a steadfast gaze, and thick eyebrows. He looked down at me and frowned so that his thick eyebrows almost came together.

He shrieked at me, “I said go home, stupid Hazaras!”

“I want to go to my school,” I said.

They stepped forward and pushed the three of us to the ground. Our black uniforms filled with dust. They shouted and told us to go home and never come back again.

We were scared and ran back home. Two weeks passed but still the school was locked. My sisters and I were so depressed being at home that my father started taking us with him to the hospital where he was working twice a week.

One day it was too hot to play outside so I sat in the waiting room observing the patients and the doctors doing their work. A Korean doctor entered the room. She wore a white coat and she looked fascinating to me. For a moment, I saw myself instead of that woman. The desire to be proud of myself and make my father proud of me rushed into my heart and cut it so deep that I had to leave the room.

I sat outside in the harsh sunlight and cried. There was something I was longing for and it was hurting me. A woman, Khala Majan, who was cleaning the hospital, came to me. She asked, “What on earth caused my child to cry this innocently?”

“I want to go to school.” I said. When I said this out loud I realized all I wanted was to be able to return to school in my black uniform and carry my pink umbrella above my head.

Khala sat down beside me and wiped my tears. “You want to go to school? Then go,” she said. “Why you are crying? Your tears won’t change anything. Remember your dreams won’t come to you; you have to walk to them. And to walk to your dreams you need feet and eyes. If your faith in going to school is still strong, then nothing on earth can prevent you from going.”

Then Khala suggested I attend a school that was three miles away from the hospital, about a two-hour walk from our home. After three days of begging, my father finally agreed to let us go. After six weeks of no school, we began walking to our new school.

We had to walk about three to four hours to get to school and home again. It was a very long way but it was fun for us. So we would not get lost we remembered the shops along the way: a music store that played Indian classic music, a vegetable store with all my favorite fruits, a mosque painted white with a door we always kissed as our mother told us to do and finally, a bookstore. I liked to stand outside this bookstore to look at the books they put out on display.

I recognized that bad won over good when two men pointed their guns to my father’s forehead and shouted to him to get out of Kandahar because he worked with foreigners. I do not blame those men. If we put pens and pencils in empty hands of men and make them busy with writing about the beauty of their life, then murderers and enemies of peace won’t have the chance to put guns in their hands and teach them to point their guns toward us.

Today I am happy that I have continued school and finished high school. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we had not returned to school, although the answer is simple: we would believe all the things our auntie said to us. Gulafroz would get married, then me and then Alia. We would miss the future we dreamed of. We would not work in the office we dreamed about. I would never get the house with the library in it that I want. I would miss the woman I wanted to become.

By Arifa, age 17

This piece has also been published by Women’s eNews. Photo by Global Partnership for Education.