Bayan Kiwan

Before the Wedding

—after Sara Elkamel’s “Before the Wedding”

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Statement of Homage

This drawing takes its title from one of Elkamel's poems. In “Before the Wedding” (forthcoming in her debut chapbook Field of No Justice from Akashic Books & African Poetry Book Fund, 2021), there seems to be a contemporary speaker, conversing with a lover. “You want me to be a woman / I hide in the black rooms of the ocean,” the poem begins. Ostensibly frustrated by her lover’s words, actions, and perceptions of her, the speaker declares “I would like to leave, read every inscription on the / riverbed.” Elkamel typically pulls references from mythology, with a focus on stories of women, both real and imagined. This poem is no exception. The inscriptions she finds on the riverbed seem to have been written by the Bride(s) of the Nile; an unconfirmed Ancient Egyptian myth that suggests virgin women were “donated to the Nile” every year, to please the God of the Nile and inspire the river’s flooding. The inscriptions describe life on the riverbed, and emerge as a revolutionary statement that ends in triumph: “We didn’t call it revolution but we did it. / We swallowed the river dry. / We stopped god. / We stopped the Nile.” The voices of these women sound both gentle and defiant—another characteristic of the speakers in Elkamel’s poems. I was particularly drawn by the following lines: “We pleasure ourselves..”

Being woman seems to exist simultaneously in a contemporary present and in accumulations of myth, that pour dissonance into one another. Elkamel’s work articulates many moments that marry the two beautifully. As a painter, I often refer to poetry with an eye for images. It is always beautiful to find those in the works of friends. I was drawn in by the visual cues in "Before the Wedding" that illustrate a collective womanhood flourishing closer to the riverbed. That place is inviting, almost a haven.

Sara Elkamel

Sara Elkamel is a poet and journalist living between her hometown, Cairo, and New York City. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at New York University. Elkamel's poems have appeared in The Common, Michigan Quarterly Review, Four Way Review, The Boiler, Memorious, wildness, and as part of the anthologies Best New Poets 2020 and Best of the Net 2020, among other publications. She was named a 2020 Gregory Djanikian Scholar by The Adroit Journal, and a finalist in Narrative Magazine's 30 Below Contest in the same year. Elkamel’s debut chapbook Field of No Justice will be published by the African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books in 2021.

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