Library
Program Notes
The Bus Driver Didn't Change His Mind
by: Eve Beglarian
One of many emotions that has come up for me post 9/11 is an intense form of feminist rage, something I feel quite uncomfortable about, if I can be honest, having always thought myself quite beyond all that. But when I got this BOAC commission, the first thing I thought of was this poem by the Bangladeshi troublemaker Taslima Nasrin. (She had a fatwa issued against her in the mid-90's and seems to have pretty much disappeared from public life.) Originally I was going to set it in the piece, but I decided not to. Here's how it goes:
Character
You're a girl
and you'd better not forget
that when you step over the threshold of your house
men will look askance at you.
When you keep on walking down the lane
men will follow you and whistle.
When you cross the lane and step onto the main road
men will revile you and call you a loose woman.
If you've got no character
you'll turn back,
and if not
you'll keep on going,
as you're going now.
The title of the piece comes from something I read yesterday in a profile of the American troublemaker Al Sharpton in this week's (2/18-25/02) New Yorker: "The bus driver didn't change his mind, Rosa Parks changed hers." The piece is dedicated to the memory of Samia al-Rumn. - Eve Beglarian