{"id":4816,"date":"2023-07-12T08:57:29","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T12:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/?p=4816"},"modified":"2025-02-15T17:35:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T22:35:45","slug":"handful-of-salt-by-kajal-ahmad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/handful-of-salt-by-kajal-ahmad\/","title":{"rendered":"“Handful of Salt” by Kajal Ahmad"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\"Handful of Salt\" by Kajal Ahmad<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"HandfulKajal Ahmad, Handful of Salt<\/em>. Translated into English by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse, Mewan Nahro Said, Darya Abdul-Karim Ali Najm, and Barbara Goldberg. Word Works, 2016.<\/strong><\/p>

Discussed at our Book Club on \u00a0July 11, 2023. The author joined us from Sil\u00eaman\u00ee. She spoke in Sorani and was translated by Yuksel and \u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00adRozan.<\/p>

Kajal Ahmad was born in Kirkuk in 1967 and began writing poetry as a teen. She has to date published seven books of poetry and has been anthologized in collections of Iraqi poetry.<\/p>

She is also a journalist, writing social commentary and analysis on women\u2019s issues and on politics. For more than ten years she was editor in chief of the daily newspaper of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. \u00a0He has hosted TV programs broadcast over Kurdsat. She is committed to preserving Kurdish culture, to liberating Kurdistan, and to achieving gender equality. She lives and works in Sil\u00eaman\u00ee.<\/p>

We discussed the poem \u201cThe Button,\u201d in which a woman loses a button on her blouse. The men around her are more concerned with preserving her innocence, lest some skin might be showing. But it\u2019s not shameful, the button just popped.<\/p>

We discussed her comparisons between Kurdistan and women. \u00a0She feels that Kurds embody power and strength\u2014after all, they stood up to ISIS. \u00a0Kurds have displayed such strength and courage throughout history. Ahmad argues that over history women have said yes, but at this point in history it is time for women to say no.<\/p>

Women have a different type of strength and power. Contrary to what men may think, women are not small. They have the power to \u00a0change the minds of men even with a kiss.<\/p>

Now we teach women to be free and strong, but we don\u2019t teach men to be there and love strong women\u00a0 or free women. We need to teach men to appreciate women\u2019s freedom.<\/p>

Ahmad lived for some time in Amman, Jordan, where she found the Kurdish community. \u00a0She\u2019s currently researching the history of Kurds in Jordan, dating back to the 12th century. She\u2019s planning to write a book on the subject. Kurds there are proud of their Kurdishness, she feels, but they are missing something that because they haven\u2019t been in Kurdistan. She wants to unearth that history and show what people in that area have done.<\/p>

The book is available for purchase here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetry by Kamal Ahmad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-club","category-poetry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4816"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7985,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816\/revisions\/7985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}