News at Eleven: [Emily Dickinson] had stayed in her room,

[Steven] Kuusisto surmised, because she was legally blind--a fact that led one of the men at the table to joke that the burka made the woman in blue as blind as the American poet. But she had the last word, reciting a landai--a poetic form used by Pashto women to express themselves, often anonymously, in a culture that does not want to hear from them. The poem concluded with a threefold curse:

May you fail all your exams.
May you become a slave, like me.
May tears run down your face, like mine.

from Granta: Leaving Afghanistan

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