ramah snippets.
2008-05-07, 10:38 p.m.

Oh my god, I have so much to study, and I just CAN'T stay focused. I'm trying to stay off my email, that's one thing. But there's all these other evils occupying me.
I just picked up an old writing book of mine, and I wanted to type up something that I started but never took anywhere. I think I might this summer.
I've had this idea of writing a story about a female suicide bomber in Gaza. I wrote this snippet.

"Ramah looked at her silent mother one more time, the muted colors of their old TV set playing upon her face, eating at her unblinking eyes bit by bit like determined ants subtly hauling away piece by piece of their latest carcass. They were almost completely digested these eyes that had seen too much of the world. It was almost gone the mind of her mother, like a slave horse unable to carry that last load. Too much, so much for too long. Ramah kissed the ridges of her mothers eyebrows and smoothed them out with her fingers. She brought up her mothers hijab from behind her and gently wrapped her unmoving head to cover her lifeless hair. Just in case. Just in case she needed to salvage her remaining dignity, the small spectra of once fiery blood that decided to cling to her instead of march off to death or an endless prison sentence with her husband and her eldest sons. Silently, like a dying mans shadow, she crossed the room to stare at her sleeping younger brother. She bent down to his ear and told him to love, not to hate, to touch and kiss, not to kill. Peace not war. But the whisper escaped. It quickly scampered up his head, over his dark hair, up the wall and out the window to be lost on the ears of no one who would be able to understand it. So instead, defeated, she kissed his cheek and left"

So it's really rough, but comments and suggestions would be very much welcome. I can see myself taking this somewhere, maybe a short story.
I was thinking the "dying man shadow" metaphor sucks, and it should be more like a monk in a church (who would glide silently in a mosque?)
I was also thinking of keeping religion completely out of this. I have notes when I first wrote it I added notes that said I could explore feminism in the arab world by making my main character muslim, but I think I want to focus on one issue at a time. Life for women under occupation of Israel, not of men in general. Maybe there's a way to do that without mentioning religion? Like faceless characters in great paintings.