Response to "E-mails from Scheherazad", book of poetry by Syrian-American poet Mohja Kahf

The theme of E-mails from Scheherazad I would say is the concept of assimilation—i.e. assimilation into a society (here, American society) that adheres to conformity, and also the problems such assimilation or lack of it causes for the society itself as well as for the person making conscious decisions to work with or go against that assimilation. For instance, in the case of the narrator of the Sacred Immorality the decision is to go against the conventional and the norm as she thanks God for helping her to “[pull] away from flesh” and to “[inhale] with every breath / the oxygen of sacred immortality.” (60) The narrator certainly sees herself alive now that she has chosen to accept Islam (her “sacred immortality”) and be the other in the eyes of the conformed.
But there is always a price one has to pay to stand clear from the rest. One becomes the other. Kahf’s narrator(s)* are considered and looked upon as others. Majority of the narrators are women, Arab women who have obviously chosen to cover their hair and body as it is suggested in Islam. However, by doing so they put themselves in an otherness position. They attract attention because of the way they look, and they certainly look different as the “tenth-grade boy with bright blue hair [says] to the new Muslim girl with the headscarf in homeroom.” (41)
They are ignored for the same reason as well, as if people who come in contact with them do not see them or do not accept them as mature human beings. Hijab Scene #3 is the best example of the coarse reaction the narrator of the poem faces at a PTA while she sits next to a “regular American mother [who] shrugged and shook her head.” (25) The narrator sends up flares to attract their attention with an ironic voice. She uses American Sign Language, beats on drums, waves flags, and even tries Morse code to no avail. “Dammit,” she say, “I’m a Muslim woman, not a Klingon.” (ibid) But she might as well be one.
The same women have a complex relationship with Moslem men of the American society such as African Americans who consider Islam as a phenomenon bound to their ancestral past in Africa, as it is presented in Hijab Scene #5:

[…] When you’re wearing hijab, Black men
You don’t even know materialize
all over Hub City
like an army of chivalry,
opening doors, springing
into gallantry. […] (31)

One of the hidden reasons “regular Americans” treat a hijab-clad Moslem woman (or any other foreigner for that matter) as a non-existence or of lower stratum probably is because of the fact that the foreigners’ otherness triggers the question of allegiance in their minds. Is this person who looks different and for most part acts different as faithful to this land as I a full-fledged American? And is it wise for me to trust this person?

Besides the concept of assimilation I see another very strong theme that runs almost parallel to the first one, and that is the gender issues Kahf rightfully puts her finger on in relation to not only the white American society but to her own Arab culture and community. Although Arab men, despite their “mustachio’d, macho, patriarchal / sexist, egotistical, parochial” (29) way of life, “look so sexy in those checkered scarves” (30), she does not fall short to notice their “narrow-minded[ness] / […] even though they are my Arab brothers.” (67) Throughout the collection, Kahf raises her voice against the injustices women (especially Arab women) have encountered and demands that they sing and repeat with her and realize that they are the ones holding everything (of this world or else) together, because: “[…] the world is resting / on the back of a tortoise / and the tortoise is poised on a spider / and the spider is dangling like a drop of sweat / from the temple of the woman scrubbing the floor / under the feet of Copernicus and the pilgrims at the Ka’ba.” (61) The men who “a hundred years since we entered those paintings / [are …] still stuck in a Neanderthal cave / on that whole man-woman thing” (67) need to understand that a woman’s “body is not [their] battleground.” (58)
Kahf, as she rightfully claims, carries “explosives / they’re called words” (39) and she is here to be the voice of the women who speak “the language of silent suffering.” (51) Kahf’s poetry and her explosive words when it comes to gender issues authoritatively demands women (all women) to ask their “quiet knights” (54) “how dare you put your hand / where I have not given permission.”

* I don’t think there is only one narrator in Mohja Kahf’s collection of poetry as it is difficult to pin point a character and chronologically follow her development. The sequence of the poems is neither chronological nor autobiographical; hence my belief in a multi-narrator collection.

Kahf, Mohja. E-mails from Scheherazad. University Press of Florida, 2003.