This is for all the women who bent their heads so we could stand tall.
Courage is not always loud.
Sometimes you can be oblivious to it happening before your eyes.
The courage that has gotten us here
May not be heard, but it lives in the eyes of a mother.
She stares straight ahead
Every time her husband yells at her.
She shakes her head
When her son calls her daughter “half-brained”.
The world crushes her into the ground,
But she still lives so she can get her daughter to school.
She says “yes” so that her daughter will one day have the right to say “no”.
She teaches her daughter to be hard, to be brave, to stand up straight.
Her quiet disapproval, her kind revolution,
Teaches her daughter that despite the world looking down at her,
She has someone to look up to.
She can dream of a world more equal.
A world where her voice matters,
A world that doesn’t see her body as sinful,
And a place where she is more than only an object of pleasure.
In that world, she can grow up to be who she wants to be.
In that world, she will be without fear.
—
Artwork: “Burqa My Foot” by Sulaiman Edrissy