This poem, from one of my first books, Ignorant Armies, reminded me that in my many visits to Gaza in the seventies I knew no Arabic, but came to feel quite comfortable with the women there.

Ignorant Armies

ARABESQUE

Gaza ‑‑ 1974

I

After dinner I’m alone with the grandmother,

while the men talk business 

and wives feed the children 

bumping each other in the hidden kitchen.

I am a guest, an English teacher new

to the Middle East, without tongue,

and I cannot play in pantomine ‑‑ 

like my daughter ‑‑ with the children and the goats.

In this bare room

the old woman talks 

as if eventually I must understand

her language

since she speaks in the feminine.

II

When I cannot answer, even after her long 

probing looks, she shrugs,

takes her crochet hook from a pocket,

and points out the window 

to a girl dancing solemnly alone.

Her gnarled hands, wound with pink wool, move easily, 

and soon she is making lovely rosettes in the bodice.  

I take the hook and try to imitate, slip,

slip again, finally latch through the last eye

to pull the rose together.  She smiles, 

I show her a stitch of my own

which she examines, unravels, 

then duplicates with a flourish.