DISCUSSION LITERATURE

In her poem "Mother's Inheritance," for example, Abū Khālid directly addresses her female ancestors by beginning the poem with "Mother." She juxtaposes markers of gendered tradition with political realities of living as an Arabic woman. For example, in the lines, "You did not leave me an inheritance of / necklaces for a wedding / but a neck / that towers above the guillotine" (Boullata, Women 162), Abū Khālid clearly invokes tradition by beginning with the idea of inheritance.

An inheritance is an item of value that is passed down through generations: although this often involves physical items or wealth, it can also imply cultural inheritance. "An inheritance of necklaces" could signify a dowry, traditional wedding garb, or both. Most notably, the right of a female to an "inheritance" has been introduced through Islam and did not exist in the ancient Arab culture; ironically, this inheritance is "necklaces," symbols of chains. This marks her place in Arabic tribal community and its gendered traditions. Her neck "tower[ing] above the guillotine" signifies political unrest, which could be tied to involvement in regional political dissension and connected to the risks taken when one breaks the rigid gendered tradition (Boullata, Women 162).

Rather than being decorated in a way that one might traditionally expect of a woman, it is in danger of being severed. This is also reminiscent of the ways extreme fundamentalists have used beheadings as a gruesome execution method, reminding the reader that such views are a perversion of Islam and are dangerous to all. In the next stanza, Abū Khālid states that the "mother" figure has left her with "Not an embroidered veil for my face / but the eyes of a falcon / that glitter like the daggers / in the belts of our men" (Boullata, Women 162). This suggests that the narrator has, in some ways, been empowered by the women before her, as the "embroidered veil" suggests tradition and the expectation that women are to cover their faces, emphasizing modesty. However, a "falcon" is a dangerous bird of prey. The hard sound in "glitter" emphasizes the visual image of the eyes glittering, specifically like daggers. The woman's eyes indicate a threat and a danger, as do the knives. Therefore, though the woman is under threat, she is also dangerous and perhaps capable of defending herself. The next stanza describes the inability of women to own and inherit property in the narrator's culture; a woman inherits "[n]ot a piece of land large enough / to plant a single date palm" (Boullata, Women 162).

The narrator is not able to grow or nurture anything in her ancestral soil due to its oppression of her; the land does not present a nurturing, fertile soil. Nevertheless, her mother has left her with the ability to grow and nurture life in her body, as she possesses "the primal fruit of The Fertile Crescent: / My Womb" (Boullata, Women 162). Thus, although gender is a regulated and enforced external social construct, her biologically female body allows her to grow life. However, this is also exploited by the surrounding culture, and to some extent, the women have historically been complicit in this dynamic. Abū Khālid writes, "You let me sleep with all the children / of our neighborhood / that my agony may give birth / to new rebels" (Boullata, Women 162). She describes a permissiveness with a daughter's freedoms in a culture that is traditionally more conservative; this permissiveness, however, has underlying political liberal motivations and is not interested in the daughter's desires or best interests.

The "agony" of childbirth, unanticipated by a young teen who is experimenting sexually, is welcomed by the mother and older women, as is the experimentation, because it will result in additional fighters. Therefore, the interests of women, especially young girls, are secondary to the political climate and perceived needs of men within patriarchy, even in relation to other women. In this sense, the women have betrayed the women of Abū Khālid's generation, treating their reproduction as a commodity. This theme continues through the rest of the poem, as the author asserts, "In the bundle of your will / I thought I could find / a seed from The Garden of Eden / that I may plant in my heart / forsaken by the seasons (Boullata, Women 162).

As the "will" of women has been subjugated within patriarchal culture, the speaker must look for a seed, a small bit of it with the power to germinate. This metaphor furthers the growth and birth themes. However, the narrator's mother did not leave her with a "seed" from her "will," "Instead / You left me with a sheathless sword / the name of an obscure child carved on its blade" and "Every pore in me / every crack / opened up: / A sheath" (Boullata, Women 162). The "sword," with the name of an obscure child, is presumably the fruit of her "agony," a boy who will grow up into a weaponized young man to defend the traditional patriarchal culture. It is with this expectation that the speaker was allowed to conceive at a young age. Furthermore, his name is "obscure" because the speaker does not have the connection with the culture of men that she does with the culture of women, she did not intend to have a child, and she may not even have named the child. Because the speaker is full of "sheaths," she is the holder of house swords, and perhaps other phallic objects. She is exposed and vulnerable, as the opened "pores" and "cracks." These images evoke injury and discontent. Muneerah Badr Almahasheer, "Feminism in the Works of Fawziyya Abū Khālid" page 6 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 20.1 (2018): Ultimately, the "sword," representing patriarchal inheritance and social influence, cannot be contained. The speaker states, "I plunged the sword into my heart / but the wall could not contain it / I thrust it into my lungs / but the window could not box it / I dipped it into my waist / but the house was too small for it (Boullata, Women 163).

Here, the woman's body equates to a house, but it is not a house that can contain the violence and the social power affiliated with patriarchal cultural norms. The metaphor of the house also references women's historical integration into the domestic sphere. The domestic and the socially external are here at odds, with the woman trying, but having little success, in reconciling them. Despite the efforts to contain the masculine violence with which she has been impregnated, the speaker cannot contain it: "It lengthened into the streets / defoliating the decorations / of official holidays / Tilling asphalt / Announcing the season of / The Coming Feast (Boullata, Women 163). Though children are raised at home and are largely under the supervision of their mothers, the boys who are created to serve as "new rebels" will go out into the streets in violent and destructive manner, as described. The domestic sphere, to which women have largely been confined, cannot contain external societal violence. Furthermore, the rebels "going out into the street" "defoliate" the "decorations / of official holidays," which are Muslim. Islam is often described as a religion of peace, and Abū Khālid reveals how cultural and political violence, driven largely by men, are contrary to the tenets of Islam. In the final stanza, Abū Khālid again begins with an address to her maternal figure, followed by, "Today, they came to confiscate the inheritance / you left me." She describes the scene as "They could not decipher the children's fingerprints / They could not walk the road that stretches / between the arteries of my heart and the cord that feeds the baby /" and universalizes the suffering to be "in every mother's womb" (Boullata, Women 163). Though her "inheritance" was a child who would eventually fight for patriarchal interests, and not the desired "seed of hope," the speaker's words evince that those who view children and reproduction as a political commodity do not understand their value as individuals, or the sanctity of the mother/child experience. This equally applies to individuals on both sides of a political conflict. This idea is continued as follows: "They seized the children of the neighborhood / for interrogation / They could not convict the innocence in their eyes" (Boullata, Women 163). Assumptions of corruption prevail as "They searched my pockets / took off my clothes / peeled my skin" (163). Here, the children, who are innocent in this conflict, are being interrogated, and the women who give birth to them are assumed to have nefarious intentions, despite their desire to safeguard the children from political conflict; innocence cannot exist in such a context.