My friend had this article on his fridge, suggestions from the Housekeeping Monthly, 5/13/55. Before you read know –– this is America, the land of the “good wife.” Warning: This may make you queasy.

The Good Wife’s Guide

“Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know you have been thinking about him and concerned about his needs…

Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking.

Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it…

Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair, and if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimize all noise…. try to encourage the children to be quiet.

Be happy to see him.  Great him with a warm smile, and show sincerity in your desire to please him.

Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner…  without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax…

Make him comfortable… Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow and take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing, and pleasant voice.

Don’t ask him questions about his actions or judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

A good wife always knows her place.”

hmmmmmmmmmm………

With this ethic published in the USA within my lifetime, who are we to criticize other cultures? How dare we take a critical view of patriarchal societies? At the same time, American Women, you’ve come a long way!

May liberation from this blatant sexism reach women everywhere! <>

Monkfish Publishing House interviews Tamam Kahn on her new book:
Untold: A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad

Q: What prompted you to write about the wives of Muhammad?

Tamam Kahn: As I traveled in North Africa and the Middle East, I felt authority and earthy power from the women who recited sacred words and sang poetry about Muhammad and his family. I wanted to discover if Muhammad’s wives had that same fierce, elegant energy. I began to read about them. I found that – according to traditional history – they did.

Q: Why do you feel this information is valuable or necessary at this time? What does it have to teach us?

Tamam Kahn: This book is meant to balance History and Her-story.  My wish is that the women in these pages may emerge as vivid individuals vocalizing the first years of what came to be Islam; that they will replace the stiff and submissive stereotypes the media often displays. In this book, we see that Muhammad was married to women born into Jewish, Christian and pagan faiths. “Untold” may inspire us to be curious and keep a flexible attitude, and if we do, we may discover all people have the same hopes, dreams, fears, and disappointments.

Q: Do you consider yourself a Muslim?

Tamam Kahn: I would call myself a spiritual seeker who regards Islam as the path of peaceful surrender to the One. For me, a Muslim is a person who walks that path. This was the “Islam” embraced by the women I write about. I am a follower of the Message of Divine Unity as exemplified by the great Sufis such as Rumi, Hafiz, and Rabi‘a of Basra. They carry a sacred outlook not limited to the form, the time, or the place.

Q: How have Muslims responded to your research and publication?

Tamam Kahn: A California Muslim woman hosting a local radio show wrote me that Untoldbrought these women to life in a way that no standard biography did. Through the poetry, she now imagined them as real flesh and blood women who were courageous, jealous, and fierce – in a very human way. For those who question my right to write about the Prophet’s wives, I would say I have great respect for each woman and admiration for the life they shared. That respect has opened doors that made this book possible.

Q: Does your book have a message for Muslims?

Tamam Kahn: As-salaam ‘alaykum. This book greets you on the path of peace. Come and enjoy the stories of your Prophet and his family.

Q: Does your book have significance for non-Muslims?

Tamam Kahn: This book is about a forgotten piece of history that needs to be brought out and honored. But for me it is not about Muslim and non-Muslim. It’s about our human family and the strength of women. This book may bring ease to a mother whose children attend school with Muslim children, the shopper served by a grocery checker in a scarf, the office worker whose boss has a Muslim name. CNN tells us that nearly one in four people in the world today is a Muslim, although Fox Network said it was one in five.

Q: How has the process of researching, writing, and publishing Untold changed your life?

Tamam Kahn: I’ve spent my life changing my life, so this is just another chapter.  There is a big difference between holding a manuscript and reading from your own book. This book seems to have “a life of its own.” I feel like I’m just tagging along. The directive that these women need to be known is an important one. From the opening poem: “I am here with a message: conversation with these women will never end.”

Q: Can you tell us about the research for Untold?

Tamam Kahn: I was hooked as soon as I began to read contemporary authors, Karen Armstrong and Martin Lings. From there I went to the oldest sources such as Ibn Ishaq. I traveled to Syria and received my own library card from the Al-Azar National Library in Damascus. When I’d researched and written a few chapters, I met with Islamic Scholar Arthur Buehler back in America, and he was moved by what I was doing and offered to help, not only by correcting the Arabic, but also suggesting early scholarly material that was respected in the genre of what is called “the hadith literature.” In that way I had the advantage of an academic checkpoint.

Q: Talk about the form you use in this book – narrative prose interspersed with poetry.

Tamam Kahn: At one point I had seventy poems and notebooks of research on the wives and daughters of Prophet Muhammad. I thought I’d find someone to write the back-story. I asked the wonderful master writer and Poet Laureate of North Carolina, Fred Chappell, what he would do if he were in my place. He suggested a “prosimetrum.” No one I knew was familiar with that term. It was used by Boethius in the fifth century – in his Latin Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius placed poems – each like a tiny well – in the prose narrative thread. The Consolation influenced Western Medieval thought, Dante and Chaucer. The form is generally not in use today, but it served my purpose beautifully!

Q: Who should read this book?

Tamam Kahn: This book is for anyone who wants to transcend stereotypes about Islam. Untoldpaints this early history with a bold, broad stroke, including Prophet Muhammad’s close and colorful contact with Pagan, Jewish, and Christian women who became his wives. Like Reading Lolita in Tehran, Untold depicts Muslim women in a new light, with focus on their intelligence and creative outlook. Book clubs will find this is an optimistic book that empowers women –– the ones who are in it and the ones reading from it! After studying Untold in an Islamic Studies class, one student was inspired to write a term paper about the first wife, Khadija. I leave a trail of research markers, so the book can be enjoyed as simple biography or questioned and investigated further.Untold is for people who discover that they want to know –– who are these women?

For more information or to arrange an interview with Tamam Kahn, please contact: Linda Woznicki at 845-417-8811 or linda@monkfishpublishing.com.

 

I am on the road, in a southern state, in the perfect autumn moment. Sky is blue and the leaves are wearing exciting colors. If I stand still and look up, I can watch them let go and dance down. In the 10 days I am here, I will drive 800 miles and visit 4 bookstores. Two down, two to go.

A few days ago I parked in front of a very large chain bookstore, took my briefcase and purse, and opened a tall glass door. Inside it looked like a cross between expo concourse, university library, and Whole Foods. I stopped eating ice cream a few years ago, so bookstores like this bring out my sorbet sensibility. I can almost taste the delicious, shiny covers.                                                     

There were long isles of fiction and non-fiction, a large children’s section and food court. It was Sunday afternoon. As I passed the information booth a woman’s voice called out, “Tamam?” I turned to meet Cheryl, my host, who recognized me from my photo. In the next 20 minutes, after stashing my coat and briefcase (one of the perks for bookstore-presenters) I browsed, glancing at the display of my book and the twenty or so white chairs.  Every now and then an elderly person would sit there to rest. I am a lucky author. At least 18 people have come to each of the dozen or so readings of Untold so far. But what if no one shows up, and my friend – once State Poet Laureate and prize-winning author – has no one to introduce me to? Cheryl smiled at me again. “Things run late in this town,” she said, soothingly. Suddenly it was happening. Fred arrived with friends and the first two rows filled up. A couple people sat in the back. Fred introduced me on the wobbly mic. I stepped up to the lectern and tossed out the “raisins” of information about the book and my life. I read some poems. The audience was smiling. They asked good questions. They were still smiling. Sarah Lindsay, an enormously gifted poet grinned at me. I signed books and hugged Cheryl good-by. <>

A few nights later, I drove an hour and a half to a well-known indy bookstore. But, it was Amy Sedaris Time and the place was papered with the delighted news of her performance and reading event the next evening. Her book, Simple Times, Crafts for Poor People was a sensation or she was a sensation or both. The $10 tickets to her event were going fast, and Dave, the man who was to introduce me was quite busy with that, and the downstairs was crammed with chairs and a kind of balcony with a lectern and a hefty mic. I hastily put up the PR that my publicist had sent the store, and scribbled “tonight!” on it, then left for early dinner.   Dave moved the lecturn down from the stage and introduced me. He was kind and helpful. The handful of attendees moved closer to me and the reading began. A smart and attentive fifth-grade girl named Aliya was listening to every word.  I felt deeply honored.

Each of these events is such a unique opportunity to speak to 5 or 40 people, to smell the books and appreciate the kind attention of the bookstore staff, the generosity of my friends and curious passers-by. I am surrounded by thousands of books for an hour. They don’t make a sound.  For those of us that love bookstores, this is reward enough, but then comes the make-my-day moment when the bookseller says, would you like to choose a paperback as a gift from us? (in that case I sold 18 books for them) or “How about our store tee shirt?” green, with the logo – the consolation prize for selling only one book. The man who bought that book asked me to inscribe it to the local library… Nice.

Fatima was the most important of Prophet Muhammad’s children. Here are poems  from the forthcoming book: Fatima’s Touch, Poems and Stories of the Prophet’s Daughter, White Cloud Press, Ashland, OR.2017 by Tamam Kahn. The introduction is in Untold:

If her elder sisters have been eclipsed by history, the youngest, Fatima, lived in the spotlight. The hadith offers collected stories of her childhood, marriage, family, and alliances. History has saved both her words and those of her father speaking to her. After Khadija’s death, Muhammad leaned on her for support; later she was given the curious and weighty title, “Umm Abi-ha,” which translates as “the mother of her father.” She became a symbol of protection in the culture of Islam. The open hand, a defining symbol of protection for Muslim women, is called “The Hand of Fatima.”

Five poems on Fatima in the spring 2016 issue of “Knot Magazine”

http://www.knotlitmagazine.com/#!tamam-kahn-/c1rsb

Silver Hand

 

We forget the face 

but wear the silver hand,

forget the look

of a lighthouse,

but recall the beam; 

witness being lifted

on clear digits of light.

 

We concede

her rescuing face. 

Like her father’s,

we say.But we cannot

see either one.

 

Ya falak!  

We swim as stars

in orbit round his

daughter, a lamp

of whispered mercy.

 

When she extends

her hand, we are

met in unforgettable

 touch.

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Wild Honey of adab 

Was there ever a better gesture for us than this? The way

Muhammad gets up when Fatima enters the room

and takes her hand to kiss it, then indicates his seat to her.

 

At her house, she reciprocates. Each garland of respect

 reveals the wild honey of adab;

inflorescent meadows spreading out, scented

 

with grace. Since we know the sting of a shrug,

how kindness can pivot and leave the room without a glance—

become the Bee Keeper. Stretch toward the buzz of others,

 

watch over each hive as the honey bees waggle.

Move slow, bee veil lowered. Honor the queen,

and hand a sweet jar to everyone you meet.

 

 

Notes:

Adab: (Arabic) important principle of refined behavior politeness, and doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason

 Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethnology for a particular figure- eight movement of the honey bee, communicating the direction of food.

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GLORY: Source: Fatima, Daughter of Muhammad, Christopher Paul Clohessy. Gorgias Press, 2009, pp. 168-173. Corrections: shear is sheer; stars marking galaxies is star-marked galaxies.

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Shine

[one sentence sonnet, after Robert Frost “The silken Tent”]

 

 

The shining happened every day, in tent

and hut, in all the rooms, and while the breeze

would linger, Zahra’s glow, all white, relent-

lessly lit each scene with light that squeezed

out dark— she sparked delight, a living pole

star— lighthouse beaming, pointing toward

each heart as if to soothe and bleach the soul

of doubt as noon-prayer yellow sang a chord,

 

a citrine gem; that sound showed women bound

in Zahra’s golden ties of love and thought,

a unity of sound went round and round

and reddened as the sun passed through the taut                          

line of the earth— red stayed in land and air;

while Zahra’s face shone conscious and aware.

 

 

This description of Prophet Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima Zahra, and her “glowing,” comes from historical material known as “hadith.” Source: Fatima, Daughter of Muhammad, Christopher Paul Clohessy. Gorgias Press, 2009, p. 94. (Ibn Babuya – Shia hadith) <>   <> “Squeezed” replaces “ease” as an end-word in Frost’s sonnet.

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<>   <>   <><>   poems from a new collection of  Fatima poems, 2012-2015      

(See part I under “November, 2009”)

I wanted ordinary street crossing. Cars stop, you cross safely in front of them. Here you thread between cars moving 25 mph or so. Not just the would-be matadors. Everybody. I stood on the inside of a scarf-headed grandmother and stepped when she stepped. We both turned a shoulder to the traffic as it zoomed past on both sides. We found the middle of the street. There seemed less than twelve inches between the hand that covered my heart and the side mirror of the car that passed. I worked on my breath so as to move purposefully, but the adrenalin was pumping and I couldn’t trust myself to be in charge of my limbs.  Reaching the sidewalk was a victory – We’re alive! I’m alive! I restrained the impulse to hug her for saving my life. This scene repeated after I bought 4 bunches of spinach, 2 carrots, 2 leeks and a kohlrabi – all for $.42 from the outdoor market.

RAMADAN: In the late afternoons I sat writing in my comfortable corner room with windows on two sides.  The hot sun was horizontal, held behind buildings, as all of Damascus focused a swallow of water to break the dry thirst, a sweet date to start up the collective digestion.Taxi drivers were grouchy and impatient (better to walk between now and sunset); Minutes ticked by toward darkness and tables laden with lamb and chicken and steaming vegetables, fruits, cheeses, bread and sweets.At exactly 4:40 on the clock, dusk arrived and a loud canon was fired, somewhere nearby, to signal the end of the Ramadan day. Then began the call to prayer from every mosque: ALLAH HO AKBAR! Tower by tower, green neon light lit up the minarets. Prayer and feasting began. It would have been good to be invited to a Ramadan meal, but it never happened. We’ve been made welcome, but not embraced. There may be anger and suspicion behind the good manners. After all, our government has given this land the humiliating title: “Axis of Evil”. To these people, proud of their history as one of the oldest cities in the world, that’s insulting.In the fast-breaking hours the streets were deserted, shops closed until 8:00 when the shopping began every evening during the month-long holiday. Families with strollers, groups of girls with linked arms, young men in twos – or trailing their large families – turned out and strolled the shops with the intention of buying something. There were sock, watch, and popcorn vendors in the middle of the walking areas. Corn-on-the-cob.  In the souk you could buy a forged damascene sword, beautiful children’s clothing, a hooka, prayer beads and the latest in fashionable covering scarves and modern clothing. I never discovered when the party stopped. By 10 pm I was headed for my room. Business was still open. Then there was a canon at 3:30AM, to wake the city, to give enough time to prepare food and pray and have a big meal before the sun rose.

One of the things that made me feel OK about going to Syria was the assurance that we were under the protection of the Grand Mufti of Syria. What a name! Who could that be? The man who received the Pope on his recent visit, had invited us to be guests at the Abu Nour Mosque for the Jumma (Friday) prayers. We were met in the VIP room and given a stunning welcome by Sheik Salah (Dr.) Kuftaro, head of the largest Muslim social service organization in Syria, son of the Grand Mufti, , and a Nakshabandi Sufi as well. He spoke to us with affection: “I can’t say to you  – you are welcome – because you are in your very home! There is a lot in common between each of us.

I think the most important thing that joins us is the mysticism of Sufism.” After he spoke, the men were escorted out and joined him on the dais on either side of his father, while the women were led upstairs to a glassed-in gallery with plush chairs and simultaneous translation headsets. The Mufti spoke commentary on a subject from Qur’an, then introduced Elias, our group leader,  to the thousand plus men seated on the vast carpet, 3 floors down from our seats.  I could see him clearly, and Shabda, in his yellow hat and shirt. Elias expressed how happy we were to be there and apologized to everyone there on behalf of the American people.  ~ We have come to break through this wall that is being built between the people of the West and the people of the Muslim world. We have been welcomed with kindness & hospitality even though my country has not been kind in its policy toward Syria. …The simple fact that you receive us with such generosity is a great strength of soul and character that is stronger than any weapon of war. Please know that your kindness is… evidence of living Islam.(The word Islam comes from salaam, and means peace.)

We observed the scene and listened to this amazing speech being simultaneously translated into Arabic. I looked around at the faces of the Syrian women near me. They smiled back and nodded. Several of us were in tears. I thought of this as enormous, on the scale of my life-experiences, felt overjoyed to witness this message of peace.

To conclude… to protect our children we must do everything we can to break through the masks that are being painted on our faces.  When we truly meet each other, we will have Peace. Let nothing stop us from getting to know each other. Shukran. (thank you).   It was as if the great mosque had become a table of a thousand candles and the women kept lighting and re-lighting one another as we were led to the VIP area where Elias received an engraved plaque. I learned in Morocco to copy what’s done among Muslim sisters who have prayed together, so I began kissing warm cheeks and quietly repeating: As-Salaam Aleikim.

Since the women are conservative here, it was a strong gesture on my part, but they seemed to appreciate the contact. Wa’leikim As-Salaam, They whispered back.

I want to wake up in Damascus with its 3:30 AM Ramadan canon (fired somewhere near the hotel, in the middle of the city – as an alarm clock!), Damascus with its pedestrian insanity, cheap vegetables and blocked internet reception for AOL. I am fond of our hotel – the Al Majed – where they make special day-time vegetable meals for me, where the fourth floor mysteriously floods at night; Damascus, with  its safe-to-walk-at-night streets; its kind citizens who said to us many times, You are from America? You are most welcome!