Sara Al Souqi, a 21 year old from Palestine, wrote this poem in response to a personal adversity; this was after the basketball coach at her school in Jasper Place High School, in Edmonton advised her not to play basketball because her hijab could lead her to have an accident on the court. She defiantly continued to play basketball, and two years later wrote the poem below, which she says is dedicated to her coach.
“Being Me”
This is, the hair you’ll never see,
The woman I’ll always be
I stand here today,
Not to convince you of me
Nor to agree with your stupid ideology
But to tell ask you why, why does one look make you turn your head away, just one look and you’ve got nothing to say
And I don’t know how they can believe that this piece of cloth, oppresses me,
Yet find it too difficult to comprehend that their ignorant thoughts are the only cage that forms around my mind
Teen magazine: It’s time for you to make some compromises
That image of beauty you inject into young girl’s heads
Is nothing but an image that’s all about the outside with no inside threads
My liberation is not what I have underneath my clothes
This is not oppression, when it is what I chose
Stop staring, till your eyes start burning
I can stare too, stare out all the flaws in you
but hey,
we’re civilized, and remember what them civilians say?
“It’s the inside of you, that matters at the end of the day”
And in the few minutes that I stand here,
I hope I make that somewhat clear.
I remember that referee who said I could not play the game
I just wish I remember his name
Like I remember the look on his face
A veiled girl walking into the school gym
His facial expressions showed a severely ugly grim
But anyway, so here’s the case
This old man with neat gray hair,
Walks up to my coach and Sais
I need to have a word with the young lady over there
Walks up to me and Sais
I’m sorry ma’am
Did he just call me ma’am?
This is me – at sixteen- by the way
After he called me ma’am I had nothing to say
“Unfortunately, I cannot let you play”
For safety reasons of course, or least he said so
After he lied to my face, I found nothing to say
But today, I do, so ref, this one’s for you
I stand here today,
Not to convince you of me
Nor to agree with your stupid ideology
But to tell you that
Your ignorance,
It what makes it damn worth, being me.
