Saturday, September 14, 2013

Remind Me Never To Use The Restroom At Sears

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

BY MOHJA KAHF
My grandmother puts her feet in the sink
        of the bathroom at Sears
to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,
wudu,
********************************

Yeah, I hear you - "Maggie, what the ...."

Well folks this is the poem that the principal of Concord-Carlisle decided would be an appropriate for a school wide reading on.........September 11, 2013.  Yeah, that Concord.

Did I mention that the kid that was supposed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance wasn't available, so they skipped it?

Oh and also, the representative of the school committee is "disappointed" that people thought that poem was inappropriate.

What's above is just the opening.  Want another sample?

And if you Americans knew anything
about civilization and cleanliness,
you'd make wider washbins, anyway
My grandmother knows one culture—the right one,
****************************************

Pissah.

3 comments:

SCOTTtheBADGER said...

Now, now, let us be open minded about the religion of blowing Kaffirs to pieces.

Anonymous said...

The quote at the end was outta context a little there. Kahf writes that whole paragraph as if her grandmother is talking. It's more of a stingy old lady who's cranky that people think they know how to be cleaner than her.

In the end the Sears customers that end up coming into the bathroom are cranky too. And the only one who isn't cranky, is the narrator of the story, who sees both sides and respects both sides. And in the end she's the one to solve all their issues, by showing them the door back into Sears, where they were all shopping to begin with. So in the poem, these Sears shoppers have a disagreement, but they are forced to live along with each other.

I guess that's bad? I don't know, think what you want. But it wasn't about hating on America, as much as it was about hating on America, hating on other countries, and the tensions between Arab and American words post-9/11. It's a whole different poem, than the one you described on your blog. Which I love, I adore your blog, but not this post.

BostonMaggie said...

It was not appropriate for the day's ceremonies. If you want to read it in DC during Islam Appreciation Month aka October, knock yourself out.