Fatima:

Good morning, Isam.

Four hours until we meet. It’s now 6:00 a.m., and I’ve been awake since 4:30 waiting for the paper to arrive, so I can tear up the announcement. So I can tear up my name.

I spent last night thinking. How many Fatima Abdel-Rahims are there in Kuwait? Hundreds, or thousands?

I felt like I was being too cautious. What are the chances that my name is the same as someone else’s? What’s the likelihood that Saqr will read the culture pages of the newspaper? The pages he has never read? Never will read? The pages for the misguided, for those who have gone astray, the intellectual deviants?

Still I said to myself: one must take precautions. I have a lot at stake if things go wrong.

I waited for an hour and a half, until the paper arrived. I picked it up with a trembling hand, a trembling heart. I opened it to page sixteen, searched for my name, and found it right away. I read it several times and felt so happy, Isam, I felt so happy and I filled my lungs with the morning air and said, Come, Mama! Look at your little girl!

My name is in the paper, Mama, in a list of poets! I was falling, Isam, into that eternal well that I told you about, into the bottomless pit of my orphanhood, that never ceases to be reborn and resurrected. Burning like a fresh wound. Why don’t the pains die away, Isam?

I couldn’t stop the impertinence of my thoughts, and the anger that rose from my chest into my ears, making them burn and redden (are you paying attention . . . ?).

If things had been different, right now we would be throwing a party. I would be dancing. But instead I am anxious, falling to pieces, tearing up the paper, the paper of my victory over orphanhood. I tore it up, Isam, I tore it up and left, as if I were tearing up something shameful.

My sadness is all-encompassing this morning, the morning of my first poetry reading. I feel that my life has been stolen, that this world isn’t for me, and never will be.

I hope you’ve saved the announcement, the announcement with my name, and yours. I hope that you’ve shown it to your mother, that you celebrated with her, that you had a special breakfast for the occasion, pancakes for example, and coffee with milk for a change.

As for me, I will spend the next few hours reading “The Night Fatima Was Arrested.” I will try to understand with Souad al-Sabah why I tore up the newspaper announcement with my name in it. Why did I tear it up, Isam? Why did I tear it up?

“This country circumcises women’s poetry,

Wraps a noose around the sun when it rises,

To protect the safety of the family.”