I am grateful for you today

My sister, my mother, my kindred warrior

Mentor and friend.

Is this, now, here, what you had seen in the legacy of universities?

Are you proud -or ashamed – of us in this

Educated time of  freedom and pain?

Did you know liberation and suffering too?

Why did you love those old books, these manuscripts

How did you choose the teachers, the places where

people earnestly attempted to accelerate evolution

In the name of majors and money all the while

in learning

they became more human and humbled or

Monsters of men?

Fatima, pray for us.

(Photo of author at Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University)