This week’s Translation Tuesday features the devotional work of Nadia Anjuman. Under pressure, the poems sing out—but not so much to the divine Patriarch as do many religious songs. Created under political pressure in Afghanistan, Anjuman’s poems speak to a feminine subject free from repressive structures. When she says “If one strand of hope finds me” one gets the impression that the “me” is the subject who speaks free of the restraints of strict gender norms. The self is shuttled into wispy metaphors of string and haze, surviving, on the back of lyric, as opaque lightness. The style of Islamic mystics is breathlessly combined with resolutely feminist concerns—the result is a dire urgency. Anjuman ultimately died under the same oppression she was writing against, and her poems give testament to the pervasiveness and resilience of song. The stakes are high here—read carefully. READ MORE…