Sahar-e-Adab Contest Winners
A contest for change.
Recently, we hosted a contest in partnership with Sahar Education, a nonprofit organization that provides underground education for girls and women in Afghanistan who have lost the right to learn. The winning poems, essays, and artworks—the pieces our editors felt best represented sahar-e-adab, or “the dawn of education”—can be found here. 100% of proceeds from this contest have been donated to Sahar Education, funding their work to educate Afghan girls.
POETRY
“dear species” by Sophia Maties
dear species dear species because you leave your porchlight on in case someone visits and lock your door in case they do and because you grow flowers on your balconies and forget the names of your neighbors dear species because you speak in apologies for things you plan to do again and dress your cruelty in ceremony and because you write history in permanent ink then hand out erasers dear species because you measure wisdom in years survived but treat the aged as inconvenience and because you name nations like they are gods then worship flags more than faces dear species because you build the theatre before you write the play and clap before the ending just to be certain someone hears and because you lay bricks over quiet and call the wall a necessary boundary dear species because you build schools to teach peace and factories to fund war and never once see the contradiction as anything but tradition dear species i regret to inform you you are still the punchline
“Scheherazade (and Helen and Eve and Lilith and—)” by Maia Brown-Jackson
The story goes, the war was fought because of Helen’s beauty. Because they prefer us as stories in which we cannot refute, cannot protest, cannot raise our voices. They like to say the girl was raped because of her beauty. They like to say the woman was queened because of hers. It’s all just a game of chance, which one of them finds you, which one of them kills you, for even if you do not die you no longer exist beyond your body. Our beauty drives them to madness, and madness drives them to cruelty. But. One woman used her voice to save as many as she could. Helen did not ask for war. Eve did not ask for paradise. Lilith asked only for freedom. These women did not survive unscathed. These women did not all survive. But they continue in myth, in story, in our words. Scheherazade smiles, and asks if they want more, and their greed buys her time. Our haunted eyes and trembling lips, they’re cursed. They see our beauty, and know what their next prize shall be. We no longer exist as human. We are symbols and rallying points. And alas, for we are all stunning and godlike and desired and so none of us are human, not like them— they who hunt, they whose biology (they say) has never bent to the word no. But Scheherazade, she keeps those women alive. She uses her voice, and she keeps us alive, because she knows none of these stories are over, and she knows we’re desperate for the end of this narrative, for the start of something new, and she knows that her voice is more powerful than their lifeless, abridged versions of the women who came before. The women desired. [Were desired?] [Or did desire?] [Like we were allowed peace either way.] [We’ll come back to this.] Remember Eve, she says, remember the woman who gave you life. Remember the woman who chose knowledge. Remember the woman who said yes. Recall Lilith, she says, recall the woman who gave you freedom. Recall the woman who chose independence. Recall the woman who said no. Scheherazade says, Oh you foolish one, my beauty is a weapon and I will use it to drive you to listen. And then— They desire Scheherazade, but she desires more. With a wink to us, she whispers, Wait, I will say. Don’t you desire to hear how this story ends? (This story never ends.) Her crusade never stops. But she is one of the women who says, fuck this. Woman desired. [Object] Woman desires. [Subject] Scheherazade is a master of words, and she knows the object’s fate is dependent on the subject. She looks at them and smiles. Don’t you desire to hear how this story ends? (This story never ends.)
“Let’s be monsters” by Maia Brown-Jackson
Previously published in Rising Phoenix Review
Let’s be witches and bitches and crones and just hideous. Let’s be powerful. Let’s take and take and take and grab the world, just fucking hold on with claws and teeth and refuse to let go. And let’s be gluttonous. Let’s devour. Let’s see what we want, what delights us, and let’s inhale it with no regard for propriety. With no regard for you. Let’s be insolent. Let’s be wanton. Let’s be ugly. Let’s show our teeth as a warning sign before we sink them into your neck. Let’s be savage and angry. Let’s say, This is for me. This is because I want. This is because I exist. This is because I take up space, as much as I want, and more, and I survive despite your best efforts to tamp me down, and I will fucking wear my defiance like a punch to the gut or— Go ahead. Tell me the red on my lips is too suggestive. It’s my fucking mouth. And I use it to bite more than anything else.
“Register Now for 50% Off” by Michael E. Wilson Jr.
Why does everything I buy Need to connect to the internet And register with King Yama To work on my device I miss the days of plug in and play Now I need to give my entire identity away I already signed up for the store I bought it from Now I have to sign up to your database to download the software I miss CD’s We didn’t appreciate the compact disc Or the floppy disc Or even the usb drive We’re a purchase away from a chip in our brain And even then they’ll make us register Some bullshit about protecting our identity While selling our thoughts to the highest bidder Why am I seeing ads about vegan supplement pills I just want a garden My old boss said he had a tomato once I forget where he was But it wasn’t anywhere urban and loud and crowded He grabbed it off it’s vine And bit right into it He said it was the best tomato he ever had Soon we’ll need to register to buy food The infamous They will say it’ll make things faster Easier Smoother Like stealing wages from a worker And the awards, you can’t shop without awards You pay less when you sign up because you pay more for shit you don’t need They’ll even ship it to your house So you don’t have to burn calories walking up and down isles Bitching about how they never have the frozen hashbrowns you love Instead An ivory white graffitied drone will drop off your groceries Ring your doorbell with E.T. like tendrils and record the whole thing (You agreed to be recorded in the fine print of your registration) But when the internet crashes Because CEO’s fired 98% of their workforce During their most profitable decade Bought back shares, to make billionaires trillionaires And everything suddenly, randomly stops working I’ll think about that tomato The one I haven’t tasted Fresh off a vine
"The Bulb Burns As Bright" by Amethyst Gallegos
The bulb burns as bright
As the dimmer permits
Anxiously awaiting its next opportunity
To glow in its untapped potential
A sparkling current of sovereign voltage
Scaled-down from The Immortal Orb
With a fraction of the juice and all of the glory
Bursting with enterprise and artistry,
It remains still.
Not a,
peaceful garden of sun-soaked dew,
Still.
Not a,
quiet concord of cosmos and carnations,
Still.
Not a,
Tranquil resting of relinquished remains,
Still.
Violently so.
Radio silence sanctioned indefinitely
Over unsettled houses
on faulted soil,
Still.
Stationary hands of a dusty clock pressed for time,
Yearning to tick with intent
but never replenished,
Still.
The atmospheric impotence of a conversation with nothing to say,
Between two long-lost affectionates
turned social curiosities,
Still.
A girl smothering sparks behind bright eyes
Poised between silence and the pulse of hope,
Still.
Glass intact and filament sturdy,
The bulb begins to believe it is broken.“In our blood” by Kavya Praveen
It does not matter if you tie our tongues, stop our voices from flowing, our opinions spilling like coffee stains on your white rugs. It does not matter if you bar us from class, stop us at the door and escort us home like stray dogs, barking desperately at meat they will never have. It does not matter if you snuff our curiosity, stifle our intelligence, suffocate us in the name of propriety and traditional womanhood. We will read. We will read in books smuggled from garbage bins behind stores, rifling through the rubbish for a morsel, a scrap of food for our souls. We will read in dim candlelight, blinds closed shut against the sun as we teach ourselves letters, then words, then sentences. We will read under blankets, in empty barns huddled together to discuss our thoughts. We will read. Then we will speak. We will speak our thoughts; our opinions that you never wanted to hear will be shouted across the nation, the world. We will speak of our oppression, the ruthless, bloody regime we live in. We will speak of the horrors we have seen, girls sold like cattle, women beaten like dogs. We will speak of your ignorance, your arrogance to assume you could keep this from us, forgetting that we are descended from Eve, who ate the first apple of knowledge. Wisdom runs in our veins, knowledge is our birthright, our destiny. You are a fool to have thought it could be kept from us. So we will read and we will speak and our voices will ring from the corners of the world; every man, woman, and child will hear our cries for justice, salvation from this hell, how you have withheld our birthright, our bloodright, our heritage. But most of all, we will speak of how we got our knowledge, our voices back. How we scraped and fought and struggled and won.
“Taliban overrules the lips of women” by Lucy Coats
Imagine the silence of women not talking to women, the held-in fragments of sisterhood kept behind lips bound shut by patriarchy’s unholy overlords. Imagine words, sinking so deep they become stars in a void of wombs, dictionaries of what must be left unsaid or die. Imagine now veiled eyes speaking, the elegant and secret gestures of small hands, a new language of soft, brushing touches, of feet tapping quiet patterns in the dust of enclosed courtyards. Women will always find ways to talk, even when our throats are throttled quiet. Herein lies the muffled hope of freedom.
ESSAYS
“The Apple of Temptation” by Julien
The dawn of education — it seems as if it has always been here. There is no sunrise nor sunset waiting for someone who learns day by day, regardless of their stature in life. Education, although not formal, is all around us. In the way we talk to one another, in the way we cook passed-down homemade recipes, in the way we adore folk dances and the culture of our countries, education dawns on us every day, whether we like it or not. The harsh truth, a white lie, even in objectively wrong opinions — if education is to learn, then these experiences are one-to-one with textbook hypotheticals. Each day, I am privileged enough to walk around an evergreen campus with every service: a science laboratory, a library, and a school canteen with affordable meals. Who is to say that you cannot gain the same knowledge, albeit different, from laying underneath a tree, taking a while to smell the flowers, changing and turning roads for a different path than usual? For me, education is found in the mundanity. As Isaac Newton discovered and brought a name to gravity whilst laying underneath a tree and having experienced an apple fall, someone may just as well find a new breakthrough from everyday experiences. Some, too, may not, and that may as well be enough. Many describe the forbidden fruit from the garden of eden to be an apple, and it is that same apple that had become well-known enough to have brought us to where we are today. The apple of temptation, then, may as well be the apple of knowledge, of education — the apple of knowing too much, the apple of corruption. Again, education presents itself to be malleable to the eye of the beholder; it may be our downfall, it may be our rise. A matter of perspective can change what we think of this apple, of this fruit, that may affect how others view it as well. At the end of the day, it is us who choose whether or not to bite into this fruit, this truth.
ART
