You Have Lost Wisdom
I knot my hair at the back
to resemble a girl you once loved.
And for years,
I have washed my mouth of beer
before returning home.
And I never bring up God in your presence.
I have done nothing to deserve your forgiveness.
You are kind, but you must have lost your senses
when you made me believe
that the world is like a girls' school
and that I have to suppress my wishes
if I want to remain the teacher's pet.
Written by Iman Mersal, I felt that this poem seemed to be telling a story that centers aroud the shift of the female persona. In the beginng, by writing "I knot my hair at the back to resemble a girl you once loved" or "I have washed my mouth of beer before returning home", there is an underlying sense of submission; the female persona is confining to the constraints imposed upon her and seems desperate to satisfy the "you", the main infringer of freedom throughout the poem. By writing as futher as "I never bring up God in your presence" manifests the extreme extent as to the female persona confines herself to the standards enforced upon her as to have silenced her acts of Muslim faith in compliance to "you". However, a sudden shift of tone occurs as the writing "when you made me beleive that the world is like a girls' school" portrays the stark realization of the breach of freedom and having lived the world "like a girls' school" symbolizing the female persona's past attitude of unquestioned submission. The following "I have to suppress my wishes if I want to remain the teacher's pet" directly elaborates on the silencing and strip of freedom, through the word "suppress", and "the teacher's pet" seems to symbolize the loved wife complying to the traditional gender role that satisfies the husband in a patriarchal society. Unlike the beginning where it is written that the actions of confinement were simply done, the poem ends on the note by utilizing a metaphor of a negative connotation of such acts expected from women through a rather powerful statement of realization.