Mid-twentieth century
They said I shouldn’t live
You see, I’m a girl
My sister was not so lucky,
she died of preventable diarrhoea
My sisters are many
but the living not so numerous as the dead
*
The school said there weren’t enough desks
even for the boys
so I stayed home two more years
My mother taught me to sing with the birds
*
At school no one noticed us much
until the day of the long black car
They took us to a place of
white floors
white people
white ceilings
I longed for
red earth
black people
blue skies
1970s
The war comes
I escape
run the border
cross over
out of hell
into abandonment
I am nameless
My language in exile
*
There is no one to love
1980s
In the camp I live under plastic
between lines of trauma
the mud fills my lungs
grief corrodes my heart
One day he stalks me
hunts me like an animal
takes me in a place
where only the birds can hear me scream
Day after day the birds wait
and listen for my cries
1990s
These are days of hope and despair
I am filling my mouth with new words
Words
like “visa”
like “protection”
like “temporary”
Words shaped to fill other mouths
*
We women,
our lives like vines threading
The eye of a needle takes more than a camel
Twenty-first century
There is no time for love
I learn the system
I know these walls
for I have dug in the rubble
and scaled them before
*
It is only then I find love
in unexpected places
She came into the centre
We were careful
It was slow but true
Daily we experiment with trust
*
Once long ago they said
I was a criminal
for speaking my own language
Then I was a criminal
because he raped me
They said I was a criminal
because I fled their war into exile
In most parts of the world
my love is criminal
And now that I am learning
the methods
and medicines
of my foremothers
without a licence to practise my traditions
I am a criminal
I do not need a licence to speak
I do not need a licence to love
I do not need a licence to heal
I do not need a licence to live
*
I still talk to the birds
I say, one day I will join you
One day it will be your turn
to cry for me
On that day I want a sky burial
From The Butterfly Effect by Susan Hawthorne, North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2005.
Eye of a Needle was commissioned by the 10th International Women’s Health Meeting held in New Delhi, India in September 2005. The performance is intended to highlight women’s health issues in an international context. It is deliberately broad, moving through time and across space. It is an aerials performance with poetic text. The following issues played into my development of the text and performance.
Beginning in the Mid-twentieth Century the health of girls and the way in which education is structured is the focus here. I allude to the fact that although many girls miss out on mainstream education, they do continue to be educated in the ways of their mothers and grandmothers. This can have very positive outcomes in terms of understanding cultural traditions. But many girls are “taken away” whether it is the Stolen Generation in Australia or whether it is for trafficking into prostitution or domestic work in countries around the world (including in Australia).
The 1970s saw many wars of independence — and just as now — the effect on women has often been catastrophic. Escape from war torn regions can mean isolation, fragility, and a great sense of loss. In such situations how do women survive in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language?
Refugees and camps have been a feature of the lives of women throughout the twentieth century, and even when women manage to escape there remain perils in the places that should be safe. Women are abused and violated because they need food, medicines, firewood and shelter for their children. Who is listening to the cries of these women?
Detention camps, names like “the illegals” have become almost ordinary in the currency of the media. What could governments possibly mean by “temporary protection visa”? Whose protection are they seeking? Under such circumstances women achieve the impossible daily.
The system is a giant wall with the bodies of many women at its base. Few manage to scale such bureaucracies. When they do it is an extraordinary feat. And so is love, whoever is the beloved. Many women find love, trust and friendship with other women. Some are lesbians.
Mass criminalisation is occurring around the world. Among them are women whose traditional health practices threaten the newly won patents of the multinational pharmaceutical industry. I am calling for resistance to the criminalisation of women healers. This has happened before in Europe and the USA. Let’s not see another “witchcraze”.
I call for dignity for all women: for sisters and aunts, mothers and lovers, friends and daughters.
Meet Mago Contributor Susan Hawthorne.