Across the Difficult

Tamam Kahn’s poetry carries bright exuberance, as well as empathy and sorrow. Her work is inspired by the mystical Middle East, and her time in Morocco and Syria. The poems are anchored with her research on women from early Islam to today. Anecdotes from history are mixed with today’s unchosen difficulties. The reader is introduced to the remarkable Rabia of Basra (Rabi’a al-Adawiyya), eighth-century leader on the path of Unity of Being. What would it be like to meet with her today? Across the Difficult presents tales of other famous mothers such as Eve (known as Grandmother Eve in Arabia), Hagar, Sayyida Zaynab-granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad, her niece Ruqayya, and Fatima al-Fihri, founder of the great Qarawiyyin University, who changed history with her life’s work. The brutal difficulties of living at this time in countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and other countries, are included in the final poems.