Nurse Noor her eyes reflect
light back into your own
twin stars near a black hole
Energy radiates
from her presence sorrow
from the pain on her face
A bandage wrapped around
her head below the eyes
each iris limpid pools
Resolved to do her job
she learned to overcome
eyes probing staring cold
Take for instance the case
of the bald caretaker
who could not know her luck
Her fortune her eyes spoke
her son cut off her nose
there the bandage felt flat
Even a blind man feels
the hollow underneath
but she herself could see
Crass casualty coarse
brutal as a dull blade
she understood her place
As a Muslim woman
outside the zenana
she learned nursing at schools
She did not mind the stares
of curious children
who would ask if it hurt
Killers of both spirit
and the soul adult men
saw just an ugly duck
Even the old woman
inside her closed casket
felt nothing but said scat
To frighten Noor away
Maman would rather die
than comfort a queen bee
Wasted beauty burdens
covers of magazines
as runway models walk
Across the long catwalk
at every fashion show
this too was once her work
Still Noor cannot complain
her present profession
allows her to assert
A certain dignity
to the process of death
as if she were to talk
Never divulge secrets
of angels who appear
before the front desk clerk
--
"Near the casket was an Arab nurse in a white smock, with a brightly colored scarf on her head."
"The nurse stood up and went toward the door. At that point the caretaker said to me, 'She's got an abscess.' I didn't understand, so I looked over at the nurse and saw that she had a bandage wrapped around her head just below the eyes. Where her nose should have been, the bandage was flat. All you could see of her face was the whiteness of the bandage."
p. 6, The Stranger by Albert Camus, tr. Matthew Ward. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1988. Everyman's Library, 1993.
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