{"id":563,"date":"2014-05-08T00:00:09","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T00:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=563"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:50:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:50:24","slug":"no-one-keeps-records-of-soldiers-and-slaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2014\/05\/08\/no-one-keeps-records-of-soldiers-and-slaves\/","title":{"rendered":"No one keeps records of soldiers and slaves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I posted about the role that fiction and poetry can play in helping us imagine individuals when we are faced with suffering on a mass scale. Today I want to share a poem by Agha Shahid Ali, \u201cAt the Museum,\u201d that to me captures the powerful experience of encountering another person through art. In 1990, Ali wrote about seeing the statue of a servant girl from Harappa. If it is the sculpture I think it is, she is 4,500 years old. She was excavated in 1926 in a house in Pakistan. He would have seen her in the National Museum in India.<\/p>\n<p>What I think is most remarkable is the way that Ali imagines the lived experience beyond her smile. He considers her labor, her ache, the way she must have \u201chad to play woman \/ to her lord.\u201d He also imagines her sculptor. \u201cNo one keeps records \/ of soldiers and slaves,\u201d but she was cast in bronze and waits, in time, for all of us to see her. And, of course, we see her in Ali\u2019s poem too, and she smiles at us.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>At the Museum<br \/>\n<\/strong>Agha Shahid Ali<\/p>\n<p>But in 2500 B.C. Harappa,<br \/>\nwho cast in bronze a servant girl?<br \/>\nNo one keeps records<br \/>\nof soldiers and slaves.<br \/>\nThe sculptor knew this,<br \/>\npolishing the ache<br \/>\nOff her fingers stiff<br \/>\nfrom washing the walls<br \/>\nand scrubbing the floors,<br \/>\nfrom stirring the meat<br \/>\nand the crushed asafoetida<br \/>\nin the bitter gourd.<br \/>\nBut I\u2019m grateful she smiled<br \/>\nat the sculptor,<br \/>\nas she smiles at me<br \/>\nin bronze,<br \/>\na child who had to play woman<br \/>\nto her lord<br \/>\nwhen the warm June rains<br \/>\ncame to Harappa.<\/p>\n<p>April 1990<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2014\/05\/The-Dancing-Girl.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-564 alignnone\" alt=\"The-Dancing-Girl\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2014\/05\/The-Dancing-Girl.jpg\" width=\"456\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2014\/05\/The-Dancing-Girl.jpg 456w, https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2014\/05\/The-Dancing-Girl-228x300.jpg 228w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 456px) 100vw, 456px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro,\u201d National Museum, Delhi, India<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br \/>\nMary-Catherine Harrison, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I posted about the role that fiction and poetry can play in helping us imagine individuals when we are faced with suffering on a mass scale. Today I want to share a poem by Agha Shahid Ali, \u201cAt the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2014\/05\/08\/no-one-keeps-records-of-soldiers-and-slaves\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}