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# Today she is not here
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/today-she-is-not-here/
- Published: 2012-12-03T09:12:43.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T20:49:15.000Z
- Description: A poem from Gabeba Baderoon. Part of a series of poems by African feminist writers for 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence.
- Author: Gabeba Baderoon
- Tags: Africa, #Migrated, 50.50 Our Africa, violence against women, 16 Days, 2012, South Africa, 16 Days: activism against gender based violence, #en, #Import 2026-04-09 14:30

- There are things I cannot tell you
- about beginnings.
- An engagement is an exchange
- of intentions between two people
- and two families.
- A beginning.
- At this engagement party the two young people
- barely look at each other. You’d hardly know
- the party was for them among the many
- who have come for the food,
- the ritual, the talking.
- One sister is missing.
- He is usually careful
- not to draw attention like this.
- She will be alright
- for the wedding and all the photos
- will show her smiling like the rest.
- And her sons will be there
- among the others, her sons
- whom she is teaching
- about softness and yielding,
- as her father taught her.
- Her father who came to her house and looked
- a little past her shoulder and said,
- no one needs
- to stay in a house where a man raises
- a hand to his wife. Come home.
- And she looked equally
- long and silently at him.
- And, who knows why, she said
- kassie, Da, but I will stay.
- And who knows if that stopped him for a while
- or made him worse.
- Today she is not here for the engagement.

*This poem was originally published in* [*A Hundred Silences*](http://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Silences-Poems-Gabeba-Baderoon/dp/0795702280?ref=opendemocracy.net) *by Gabeba Baderoon (Cape Town, Kwela/Snailpress, 2006).*

*Read* [*other articles*](http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/16-days-activism-against-gender-violence/16-days-of-activism-against-gender-violence-2012) *in the series, 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence 2012.*