AYISHA
or a code of honour
They said:
It is just and righteous to trounce Ayisha.
Father smites Aysiha.
Three brothers beat Ayisha.
First husband batters Ayisha.
Second husband pounds Ayisha.
When bruising could not get deeper,
Aysiha escaped the sloshing
and from the desert grown in her eyes
she eloped, to a distant land.
They said:
On our honour she spat, the wonton woman
and act we must
to deliver ourselves from sin and stain.
One day in
in that quarter where people
became used to look the other way,
three gunshots were heard.
Ayisha lay on the ground:
a streak of blood trickled from her head to the right;
a streak of blood trickled from her neck to the left
and a curd of blood on her chest
looked at the sunset.
Mario Azzopardi