“A proper lady” (Zonja, in Albanian) is many things, but more than any other, she is expected to be obedient. For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you an incendiary prose-poem against the patriarchy, written by the queer Kosovar poet Arbër Selmani and translated by Suzana Vuljevic. In this mordant poem, a chorus of unnamed women turn society’s expectations upside down, their harsh refrain of “if we were proper ladies” calling attention to the abuse and exploitation inherent in the class aspiration of being “a proper lady.” In the words of the translator: “Proper ladies in the context of the poem largely refers to the kind of women that are forced to follow the rules as it were, becoming inured to male dominion, fulfilling a submissive, obedient role, and falling prey to misogynistic men. At the same time, there is an overtly rebellious undercurrent that calls out the indecencies of societies that take advantage of, abuse and demean women.” Implicit in the poem’s collective point-of-view is an alternative aspiration, a solidarity that can resist the oppression of a misogynist society. Read on!
If we were dignified ladies, we’d have to wake up at the crack of dawn and wash the feet of the patriarchy. If we were proper ladies, we’d be off filling jugs with water, heating them up with the dark bits of our souls. If we were ladies, we’d have to be sure not to make a sound at night. We’d have to fake orgasms, swallow the pain, and then go on to tell ourselves we had it coming. If we were the kinds of ladies society wanted us to be, we’d be in the habit of rolling our eyes and accepting our husbands’ slaps like ordinary boxes of chocolate. If we were ladies, we’d have to cook around the clock to fill the hairy bellies of wretched husbands—husbands long ago turned masters.