These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination... Rabindranath Tagore

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past...F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.
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On the way to the river are the old dormitories, used for something else now, with their fairy-tale turrets, painted white and gold and blue. When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.
--from Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
- Joyce Carol Oates

Monday, January 14, 2013

Walk In My Shoes


Walk In My Shoes (2004) - Alwyn Evans
(Teacher resources HERE!)


Am I free?

 ~~~~~~

 I can't see Dad's face any more

 Self-conscious

 I know too much about trauma

 New Australian camp worlds are strange

~~~~~

 It's not Afghanistan of my childhood

 And I'm still a child
To a point
(I sew my own doll's clothes
But I've been connecting with Abdul
For a while now)

 ~~~~

Do I need Afghanistan?
From a strange world view

 Perhaps Afghanistan needs me

 To make a difference

~~

 Am I free?


I'm working on it


GOOD READS REVIEW
 Walk in My ShoesWalk in My Shoes by Alwyn Evans
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nessa's Afghanistan was a tortured world, a world living the fear of The Terror. And the fear stays alive in her mind, even when her family ventures to the Australian unknown, seeking some kind of freedom and life. Like some ugly Medusa, old realities become nightmares, recurring in jagged, disjointed fragments. But the land of "red dirt and blue sky" heals the thirsting spirit - slowly.

View all my reviews

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