Performance

Not that she, a poor village women ever 
aspired to stardom, yet there she was centre 
stage, her peers surrounding the spectacle
of the burly man who was her partner in the
drama that unfolded. He was not the one
she had spoken to brazenly in defiance of
heritage, custom and Islamic Sharia in a
display of dishonouring her family by her
lack of virtue, speaking through the fabric
of her niqab to ask a question. Ask not what
the penalty is pronounced by the village
council of elders for to ask is to betray
unforgivable ignorance betraying the most
basic of Islamic precepts; woman: hide
speak not, silently exist but be fecund and
industrious. On another stage the figure of
another defiant yet faithful in Islam who
sneers at the sectarian impudence of his
majority population asking for parity with
those of their ruler's sect whom he labels
terrorists embarking on a campaign of 
arrest, torture and slaughter. The civilized
world watches in horror but he will be
redeemed by those who will not hesitate to
support his reign of terror, reestablishing
the respect in which such butchering tyrants
are held. The village woman's lacerated back
will heal, she will resume her humble place
forever be known as a humiliated penitent.