by Ali Nuri

Dunya Mikhail’s In Her Feminine Sign is a nuanced meditation on restlessly seeking that which cannot be found, made all too apparent to those whose homes have been razed to the ground. Sifting through the rubble, it becomes clear that one’s boundaries, identity, and security have been forcibly confiscated. The illusion of freedom is tinged with the realization that, even in this modern world built on affirmations of equal opportunity, self-determination is very much a privilege and not a birthright. For those who live in war-torn countries, the will of the world determines their course, and they become its neglected subjects. In her work, birds and butterflies stand as common motifs, representing this paradox of being unattached yet not liberated:

This, then, is how the map grew borders.
The birds don’t know it yet, leaving
their droppings wherever they want.
Their songs, like exiles, might pass by

anywhere. There are no borders
in paradise, neither spoils nor victors.
Paradise is Ama-ar-gi,
no victors at all.

Iraq carries so much of human history, from creating the first civilization, the first written language, and the first law. Blending this rich history with disturbing images from the present, the loss becomes more poignant. The stark contrast between an artistic rendering of ancient clay tablets and the shelled-out buildings and mass graves that the world uses to define the country today forms the backbone of the collection, which is in turns both tender and morose:

I am sorry
my poem will not
block the shells
when they fall
onto a sleeping town,
will not stop the buildings
from collapsing
around their residents,
will not pick up the broken-leg flower
from under the shrapnel,
will not raise the dead.

Mikhail delivers an often-harrowing glimpse of those in-between spaces islanded by forces outside of one’s control. For the voiceless, the outer world becomes a veil encircling them, their true form appearing as a silhouette attempting to commune with the other side—the corporeal world. But which is the real ghost—the voiceless or the indifferent? This cloister of invisibility is well-trodden by the displaced, in which the inexpressible is lost in translation:

We are not dead,
and those are not our ghosts.
We don’t know where they came from,
or where they are going.
Their shadows are as changeable
as the moon’s phases
and are not our shapes.
Their jinns floating over the waters
are not our wars.
Their hollows are not our cracks
on the walls. In our sleep,
they melt into one gesture.
What do they want to say?
And why—every night,
in view of the stars—do they dig
a hole for someone whose turn has come?

In Her Feminine Sign is a must-read masterwork that defies the twin cruelties of oppression and apathy, unraveling the layers of chaos to find the remnants of unwavering hope. This collection poses a measured, tactful protest against the injustices of the world, reminding us that, turbulent as it may be, humankind has not yet lost its humanity. The birds may, still, find their way home again.