Featured Artwork: ‘The Prophet’s Daughters’, a series by Gheorghe Virtosu
Sometimes people don’t recognize my name
They hear it and say it’s unique
It’s an old Arabic name, I tell them
What does it mean, they ask
I tell them I’m not sure, as far as I know it doesn’t mean anything
And then after a minute
An hour, a day, a month
They say it the way they recognize it
Like welcoming back a distant cousin
‘Ah, Kalthoum!’
‘You mean Kulthum?’
‘Accha, Kulsoom!’
They say it in Arabic, they say it in Urdu
I have never really minded being an Indian derivative of Arab history
I am named for a woman I never met
Who was named for a woman she never met. And it goes on
Till the years roll back like a Persian carpet across a marbled floor
To a woman we never met
To a woman we only know through her father
Too young to have made herself known back then
Too woman to have made herself known back then.
I wonder if she could write poetry, even if, like her, it didn’t survive
Even if a woman before her, who had her name
Birthed a son to poetry
Did she survive to see it?
Woman after woman after woman
‘The one with beautiful cheeks’ to
‘The small ribbon on a flag of victory’ to
‘The Prophet’s daughter’ to
‘That’s okay, really. I don’t mind that it doesn’t mean anything.’
How many existing words in existing languages can claim that?
That they are, and yet they are lost to time?
An Indian with an Arab name
Muslimhood carrying the legacy of a woman across countries
Even if history could not remember her
Like it remembered her father
Her husband
Her sister
Nameless without a name
They say she was full-figured
I look at my body, and I am looking at heritage
It was said she had a sense of humor
I whisper to my father across the dinner table and watch him laugh
And I feel grateful that I’m named for her
I don’t want to limit her to her cheeks
Or make her part of a battle she never fought in
There is more meaning in nothing than that which does not feel truthful
Whether I trace myself back to the Prophet’s daughter
Or the poet’s mother
Or my own great grandmother
I carry the empty memory of them all
Like a shadow in my hand.
It’s just ❣️❤️
Thank you, it means a lot <3