Bear 243

Meet Nathifa - knitted in honor of an Unimportant Woman in Cairo, Egypt

An Unimportant Woman – Nathifa, Cairo

When Nathifa shuts her eyes to sleep

She relives the nightmare they called fight for freedom

She sees her brother - breathless. Dead on Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

The radiant, brilliant scholar of antiquities

Sacrificed his body to their dreams of democratic bliss.

Nathifa twists and turns and tries to push away

The images of agony - familial bonds denied forever,

Replaces them with skeins of brightly colored yarn,

Imagines finished toys, packed and shipped to sub-Saharan Africa,

Where other soldiers fight the endless fight.

The thought of giving joy becomes a soothing pillow.

“They wage wars and I knit teddy bears.”