It is silk it is sandpaper it is mud.
I raise my hands to the sky and thank God for the mud.
For this mud gives life to rice .
This mud gives life to me and my family.
Other people see it as nothing, something to be avoided something dirty and unclean. But they don't know how hard we work, how we wake up at dawn each day to tend for the beautiful green shoots that come up from the mud. How we pray that God will allow the delicate stalks to survive and flourish. For without them we are nothing.
Three years ago a storm froze the fragile stalks.
I thought I knew hunger, I thought we were acquainted.
But I realized we were strangers.
I remember Aleya the littlest sister now in the ground and in our hearts.
No they who cringe from mud have no idea.