{"id":7195,"date":"2015-12-07T11:24:02","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T11:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africlub.net\/awdf\/?p=7195"},"modified":"2015-12-07T11:24:02","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T11:24:02","slug":"beneath-her-veil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/awdf.org\/OldSite\/beneath-her-veil\/","title":{"rendered":"Beneath Her Veil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beneath Her Veil<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Beneath her veil lay eyes filled with fear<\/span><\/p>\n

Of man and his ways, of evil bred within good<\/span><\/p>\n

Of what lay ahead of her, what fate had dealt her<\/span><\/p>\n

A world that turned against her, blamed her, maimed her<\/span><\/p>\n

Condemned to a death so bloody, an end so violent<\/span><\/p>\n

A memory tainted by unjustified justifications<\/span><\/p>\n

Innocent? Guilty? A victim of societal condemnation<\/span><\/p>\n

Actions based on so-called religious obligation<\/span><\/p>\n

Her body, tears, blood, their means to purification<\/span><\/p>\n

To their honour, a restoration<\/span><\/p>\n

Of her being, a termination, elimination<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps she was born into the wrong nation<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beneath her veil lay eyes filled with questions<\/span><\/p>\n

They leave their homes, closing their doors to their own sins<\/span><\/p>\n

Their robes kissing the earth, their voices rising in mock anger<\/span><\/p>\n

Stony looks matching the hearts in their chests, the rocks in their hands<\/span><\/p>\n

Personifications of the ironies of this world<\/span><\/p>\n

Dishonourable soldiers of God\u2019s army, fighting for honour<\/span><\/p>\n

Casting stones with hands tainted by their own misdeeds<\/span><\/p>\n

Egos inflated with the thoughts of doing right by God\u2019s law<\/span><\/p>\n

Judges of the \u2018adulteress\u2019, defenders of their own adultery<\/span><\/p>\n

Drowning out the voice of reason, her pleas, her desperate calls for mercy<\/span><\/p>\n

Chanting loudly from the holy books, words they refuse to honour<\/span><\/p>\n

Teachings they refuse to follow, commandments they refuse to submit to<\/span><\/p>\n

Picking what favours them and discarding all else that follows<\/span><\/p>\n

She questions the sincerity of man in his quest to please our Lord.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beneath her veil lay eyes filled with indifference<\/span><\/p>\n

To everything happening around her, deep within her being<\/span><\/p>\n

Her effort to numb out the pain as the first rock strikes<\/span><\/p>\n

Thrown from hands that had once held her close and professed love<\/span><\/p>\n

From fingers that had interlaced with hers on those moon-lit nights<\/span><\/p>\n

Stones cast by her friends, neighbours, her family<\/span><\/p>\n

Blind to the innocence in her eyes, the purity in her heart<\/span><\/p>\n

An outcast within her caste, disowned by her own<\/span><\/p>\n

Her \u2018partner\u2019 set free, supposedly innocent of the act<\/span><\/p>\n

Defying all logic\u2026 takes two to commit yet one was enough to submit<\/span><\/p>\n

To the will of man, the unjust cause of the Homo sapiens<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beneath her veil lay eyes filled with pity<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Forgive them Father, for they know not what they are doing\u2019<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Stoning down an innocent soul, ending a life they did not create<\/span><\/p>\n

With every drop of her blood, their shouts of victory grew louder<\/span><\/p>\n

All compassion lost, all empathy thrown away<\/span><\/p>\n

Sucking out her life, reaffirming their holiness<\/span><\/p>\n

Fighting and winning a battle that belonged to God<\/span><\/p>\n

Ignorant of the facts, the sad reality of their existence<\/span><\/p>\n

That with every rock cast, every jab felt and every breath lost<\/span><\/p>\n

An immaculate being was abused, the earth defiled.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beneath her veil lay eyes absent a soul<\/span><\/p>\n

She slumped, her body a mass of bruises and scars<\/span><\/p>\n

She met her death standing, buried to her waist<\/span><\/p>\n

Her last breath in the whites she had put on herself<\/span><\/p>\n

Whites of her baptism and wedding turned to a bloodied shroud<\/span><\/p>\n

No ritual bath, no prayer, not a chance to be mourned<\/span><\/p>\n

Cheated of her life, denied a chance at justice, a sacrifice<\/span><\/p>\n

For men who sought reassurance in the sins of others<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet their honor shall never be worth a drop of her innocent blood<\/span><\/p>\n

And their sins shall forever remain theirs to bear.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Jama Jack<\/em><\/p>\n

November 2013<\/em><\/p>\n

Feature image:\u00a0FreeImages.com\/Janet Burgess<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Jama_Jack\"Jama Jack is University Communications Officer at the University of The Gambia. \u00a0She has written articles for Lend a Hand Society\u2019s magazines: <\/span>Extinguish It<\/span> and <\/span>Rhythm of The Young<\/span>, the <\/span>Daily Observer Newspaper<\/span> in The Gambia as well as <\/span>Balafong Magazine<\/span>. \u00a0She runs a personal blog, <\/span>Linguere<\/a><\/span>, which she uses to raise awareness on and promote the various causes she supports, especially issues relating to women and girls. Jama, who\u00a0was also a participant in AWDF’s 2015 Writing for Social Change Workshop<\/a>, \u00a0sees literature as a powerful and tool to transform our society.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beneath Her Veil Beneath her veil lay eyes filled with fear Of man and his ways, of evil bred within good Of what lay ahead of her, what fate had dealt her A world that turned against her, blamed her, maimed her Condemned to a death so bloody, an end so violent A memory tainted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":7198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[592,355,357,1178,223],"class_list":["post-7195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-16days","tag-activism","tag-gender-based-violence","tag-jama-jack","tag-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBeneath Her Veil - The African Women's Development Fund (AWDF)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/awdf.org\/OldSite\/beneath-her-veil\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beneath Her Veil - 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