Venice masks

Saturday, 1 March 2025

Sisters, you sold your jewellery - Hawa Jibril

Sisters, you sold your jewellery
 
Depriving yourselves,
Enriching the struggle.
 
Sisters, you stayed as one,
United, even when your brothers
Divided and deceived our nation.
 
Sisters, you joined the fight –
Remember the beautiful one,
Hawa – stabbed through the heart.
 
But, sisters, we were forgotten!
We did not taste the fruits of success
Even the lowest positions
Were not offered
And our degrees were cast aside as dirt.
 
Sisters, was this what we struggled for?

Hawa Jibril (1920 - 2011) Somalia 
Translator not stated
Source: Somalia – The Untold Story The War Through the Eyes of Somali Women, Edited by
Judith Gardner and Judy El Bushra, Pluto Press, 2004, p. 175

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