Swimming in the Desert: The Uncensored Poetry of a Saudi Social Activist

By Lama Feher AlGhalib

This volume of poetry is essentially the everyday thoughts of a young Saudi Muslim female. It captures her struggle to cope with her surroundings and the emotional weakness in each human being that is manifested in the form of love, hope, and vision, coupled with a sense of confusion, despair, and enmity.
Her political culture differs from those around her; her liberal, utopian mindset is adjusting to the realism of the world as she attempts to swim in a dry desert. For, she is from land that is surrounded by turmoil. She adheres to a religion whose people are antagonized. She lives in a world of wealth where still millions are dying of malnutrition. Yet, her liberal voice surfaces, and her verses echo within the chambers of her mind.
Explore her thoughts and study her anatomy by reading Swimming in the Desert, and you will tap into her motivation as a social activist; her pensive thoughts on identity, childhood, and sentiment; her feelings about love and romance; and, more important, her views on her culture, the current global turmoil, and this eras morality.
Delve into a world of universal thoughts through an endless journey of exploration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491887899

Book preview

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© 2014 Lama Feher AlGhalib. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/15/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8788-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8789-9 (e)

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Contents

CHAPTER 1: ON IDENTITY

1.1 Exploration

Hello, Pen

The Beginning

I Don’t Know Yet

Stronger

Twenty Years Old

Raised by Men

Amorphous Being

My Inevitable Fate

Nothing

False Identity

Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes

I Hate the Recognition

Replaceable

Ignore Your Emotions?

I Live for a Reason

1.2 Purpose

Acceptance

Life’s Effect on You

Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way

Dreamy Star

Calling Out

Graduated

1.3 Poetry

The World of Words

So What, I’m a Poet!

Poetry Today

Poetic Lapse

Documentation

Poet Dissected

I Wish

CHAPTER 2: ON LIFE

2.1 Childhood

Bees That Cannot Sting

Just Yesterday

Denial

The Day I Grew Up

2.2 Love

An Amateur in Love

Dear Awaited

My He to Be

The Shield

Emotionless Chamber Invaded

Marriage

2.3 People

How Did He Who Is Wise Become So?

The Apple of My Eye

What Friends Are For

Everyone Has a Story

2.4 Motherhood

A Maternal Bond

In My Womb

Dear Daughter of Mine

Good Morning, Maarya

After Birth

2.5 Restlessness

On the Brink of Breaking Down

How Could Anyone Not Sleep?

Blacked Out

Chaotic Mind

Restless

A Soldier’s Rest

2.6 Miscellaneous

Leisure Time

The Squirrel and the Shrub

I Conquered You

Mona Lisa

Tiger’s Eyes

Tears

CHAPTER 3: ON SOCIETY

3.1 Culture

A Plant in a Pot and a

Waterfall in a Fountain

Truthful Scripture

The Death of Hearts and of the Arts

You Say Bedouin Like It’s a Bad Thing

Culture vs. Religion

A Saudi Man

3.2 Global Turmoil

A Message from a Tribal Girl

Penguins Aligned in Protest

Violated, yet Undefeated

Twisted Game

Don’t Label Me

Peace

The Gaza Kids in the Saudi Hospital

Moment of Sobriety

Avoiding Repetitions

The Twenty-First Century

The Ugly, Hidden Truth

Echo Chamber

3.3 Morality

Helpless

In My Prayer

Angry at the Night

Envy

The Destruction of Masculinity

Secondhand Smoke

Shallow

Crying Out

About the Author

About the Book

chapter1.jpg10exploration.jpg

Hello, Pen

I surrender to your scripture;

I surrender to your might.

Now show me what I need to know—

Tell me of my unknown plight.

Speak to me as though you’re real,

As though you’re sitting here beside me.

Console me and give me strength

To face this world hospitably.

Speak my mind when I cannot.

Share my secrets with this world.

Tell them that I’m not just

A really, really troubled girl.

My fingers hold this pen.

They move to write.

They have life within them.

They remind me: I’m alive.

The Beginning

—upon my being asked why the words The Beginning appeared on the last page of my first volume of poetry

How shalt thou end with the beginning?

The last page mustn’t always be the end,

For when it comes to being an amateur,

Heaves of paper always do transcend…

Seventeen, with much luck in store for me,

Looking upon the farthest star:

I’m yet to live and love and laugh,

But all my dreams just seem too far…

I wish to reach them, I really do,

To be all that I can be.

But with such dreams as mine,

Is that even a possibility?

Well, this is just the beginning,

So I suppose we’ll wait and see.

I Don’t Know Yet

Why do I think I know

Much more than I know I know?

Why do I think that there’s depth

Beneath everything that’s shallow?

Why does watching the sunset

Make me