Hijab Ban
Binazir Haidari
What is the difference between oppression and liberty?
In France, August of 1944
after the land and women were raped by years of war
the liberating soldiers raped the same women
they liberated
as a reward -
women’s bodies paid the same price for peace and war.
Because liberation never really reached us, to this day
we women can never tell the difference between
enemy and saviour
because the saviour only saves us
for himself
from the tip of an extremist’s gun
to the tip of his educated pen
they write our existence for us
in courts where justice is not so blind
to how much skin was showing
(and now) how much is not showing
we women are
raped by the male gaze of justice
by written policies that strip away the dignity
from our bodies -
layer by layer of banned clothing
in the name of undoing what the Taliban did
but I think the Talibs would stand proud
to see these men
ban the human out of women
and the choice out of so called liberation.
You see the saviour saved us
for himself
to redo what extremists do
under a different name.
And in all the wars
from world war to war on terror
if the oppositions met
they would pause fighting for a consensual moment to agree
that women’s bodies are a battle ground for their masculinity
and whether they decide on oppression or liberty
we women, will be denied the difference.
The art in the poem’s thumbnail is courtesy of © @lk.imany.