In beautiful poetry by Tarfia Fazizullah in “Seam,” the poems “Would you call yourself a survivor or a victim” and “Were there any other women there? Such questions as “Did you go along with them?” not only show how hardships, identity, trauma, communication and comradeship are inevitably intertwined during warfare and oppression but also reveal how these conditions can lead young people to gain a better perspective on their lives (Faizullah, 2014). He employs emotive wording and symbolism, which are poetic and hard-hitting narratives, to peel off to the depths of human nature, more so exploring the speaker’s situation as a Bengali Muslim here. This poetry convinces us to examine the difficulties of living in a country that is one’s parents’ homeland, staying strong after the most brutal blows, and achieving comfort and strength in the community. In this analysis, we will focus on how each poem separately addresses the subject discussed by using imagery, tone, themes, and other literary methods. In connection with this, we will discover what message each poem carries.
Poem: “Would you consider yourself a survivor or a victim?”
The poem shows us the endless brutality and repudiation marched one by one upon the speaker, who has his Muslim beliefs as well as identity as a Bengali. The call, “You Muslim or Bengali,” refuses them to choose between the two identities and instead asks them to be who they want to be despite what their answer will be. Pulling water out of the well and bathing in a sari contrasts the oppressive reality of the attacks. It symbolizes how the daily struggle with the cruel fate goes. The sentence “river, which “meanders here, slams there” is an allegory of the world’s uncontrollability and heartlessness.
Through Tarfia Fazlul’s “Seam”, the poems “Would You Claim Yourself as a Survivor or a Victim” and “How Many Other Women Were There.” Jacuzzi’s question of whether the boy “went along with them?” has opened up topics that touch on the central issues of individuality, suppression, violence, and endurance. With the help of his masterful imagery, Fazizullah portrays the ferocity of the speaker’s struggle using gravity’s symbol and unstoppable river, as well as mighty fists, to show how violent these experiences are. This is an emotional swing of perseverance mixed with lamentable but also quiet courage of living in the middle of the enemy fire, which is shown through the conduit of a meticulous and not very interesting everyday life survival along with the brutality of the attacks. By exploiting elements like repetition, imagery like metaphors, and contrast, Fazizullah builds a compelling narration that raises the readers to the point where they can understand the multiple dimensions of identity, the omnipresence of oppression, and the internal force that can be found in our association and connection as humans.
“Were there other women there? Did you go along with them?”
This poem is about a woman whose most intimate relationship is with another woman. Together, they strive to find their way through the hell that is their lives. The symbol of dark, metallic buckets and their hands touching represent that they did not have easy lives and struggled together. Having the girls pull water from the stream with their buckets symbolizes the group’s power to overcome any obstacles that they might encounter. Those copper wisps sewn into the bustle of her companion struck the speaker as beauty’s calm note amid the chaotic maelstrom that had been their common peril. The frequent reiteration of “forced us” shows the compulsory collaboration and pain the women have experienced through this.
In the poem “Were there other women? Did you go along with them?” by Tarfia Fazizullah, the author dives deep into the intimate connection between two people that is sometimes formed in dangerous times. With explicit imagery about the cast-iron pail, the muddy river, and the red mark in a fellow shipmate’s hair, Fazizullah looks at the themes of sharing experience, being traumatized, and resisting it all. The presence of the mood and feel of this tone of reflection and grief is further aggravated by the use of imagery and repetition that help to express the inescapable unity born of a common challenge that they face as they try to dismiss the force being used to coerce them into cooperation.
Reference
Faizullah, T. (2014). Seam. SIU Press.
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