An Afghan form has only a few formal properties.
Each has twenty-two syllables: nine
in the first line, thirteen in the second.
The
poem ends with the sound “ma” or “na.”
(One
meaning of the word landay is short, poisonous snake.)
These are the
specifications I found at
Along with almost
all of the examples below.
Sometimes they
rhyme, but more often not.
In Pashto, they lilt
internally from word to word in a kind of two-line lullaby
that belies the
sharpness of their content, which is distinctive not only for
its beauty,
bawdiness, and wit, but also for the piercing ability to articulate
a common truth about
war, separation, homeland, grief, or love.
Within these five
main tropes, the couplets express a collective fury, a
lament, an earthy
joke, a love of home, a longing for the end of separation,
a
call to arms, all of
which frustrate any facile image of a Pashtun woman as
nothing but a mute
ghost beneath a blue burqa.
The landays* are a
way to subvert the social code in which women are prohibited
from speaking
freely. Since the poems are collective and anonymous "women can
claim they just
overhead the poems in the marketplace," says Griswold, "not
that they authored
them."
*Authors note: Even in this extensive site, we note Landays
used as the plural, but
formally I read
somewhere the plural is Landai. That
seems consistent with English usage.
"These
poems are part of an oral tradition that goes back thousands of years, sung by
nomads and farmers at wedding ceremonies or around campfires. Today, the landay form has in some ways gone underground,
becoming a means of expression and defiance for oppressed Pashtun women."
Poetry to Die For.
Jim
Fleming: In Afghan culture poetry is revered incompetent fact, you can find
lines of famous poems graffiti-ed on sides of buildings. There are though
some poems that are secret, like this one: I call your stone, one day you'll
look and find I'm gone. There is a story behind that poem and
Strainchamps is here in the studio with me, and you have the story.
Anne
Strainchamps: Well Jim the story begins with a teenage girl named, Rahila, and
she lived Helmound, which you know is one of the Taliban strongholds
[xx]. Like a lot of real Afghan girls, she wasn't allowed to leave her
home or go to school, her father pulled her out of school after the fifth grade
and she found refuge in poetry. The poem you just read is a landay,
that's a folk poem part of a Pastian tradition of woman's poetry. Rahila
began to write and quote poems like this. Then one day her brothers
discovered that she was writing love poetry, and that is something that is
considered very dishonorable and they beat her badly. In protest, Rahila
doused herself with cooking oil and she set herself on fire and she died.
Jim: Oh my Lord. In our culture to imagine a culture where
a woman dies for writing poetry.
Anne:
Yeah, and the reason we know about [?] Rahila [?] Muska- her real name turned
out be [?] Zirina - is thanks to American Journalist and Poet, Eliza
Grizwald. Eliza heard about Rahila, and she traveled to Afghanistan to
try to find out more and she uncovered this hidden poetry tradition.
Poems called landay.
What I can tell you
after personally visiting several educational and revealing sites is that the
specified requirements are WIDELY ignored in the poetic examples I was able to
find, and to no detriment to the form, and that there is on other poetry form
that is used so exclusively by women.
Further,
I think it is the most vital and socially
functional poetry in the world today.
Here are some
examples. I rarely found a poem that met
the line by line syllabic requirements.
I never found one
with the "ma" or "na" ending.
See for yourself if
the have "bite".
You sold me to an
old man, father.
May God destroy your
home, I was your daughter.
Making love to an
old man
is like fucking a
shriveled cornstalk blackened by mold.
The old goat seized
a kiss from my pout
like tearing a piece
of fat from a starving dog’s snout.
May God destroy the
White House and kill the man
who sent U.S. cruise
missiles to burn my homeland.
When sisters sit
together, they always praise their brothers.
When brothers sit
together, they sell their sisters to others.
Your eyes aren’t
eyes. They’re bees.
I can find no cure
for their sting.
Come, let’s lie
thigh against thigh.
If you climb on top,
I won’t cry.
My lover is fair as
an American soldier can be.
To him I looked dark
as a Talib, so he martyred me.
Be black with
gunpowder or blood-red
but don’t come home
whole and disgrace my bed.
Here are some from
the Tenth Muse
What can a woman
know of war?
Only how to weep
angry tears and bury her dead.
*
I sing even under my
blue hood.
My mother says I am
a most determined songbird.
*
He says at home I am
a flower
but to the world I
should be as plain as a weed.
*
And finally, I am
required to write one myself:
So poets, give
structured writes a try,
but let your words
cry for those who wrote then had to die.
