the dry grass. my mother's family came upon the burnt out fields and found the body of a dog still smoking from the fire. it's tongue was sticking out of his charred skull. my mother heard it whine. it's only the wind my grand mother told her. but the clouds above stood still. there was no wind that day. it is almost dawn. she is quiet now. mother, i said, stroking her hair and forehead. she opens her eyes and for a moment creeps me with a blank stare as if i was part of the nightmare. but she smiles and the past restores itself. i kept you up again my mother said.

no. it was the heat, i answered softly. inhealing the frayingance of mangos that drifted in from the orchard. and bowed my head to the mercy of the flies. my last piece is about what it was like what it might feel like to be dead. i was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago. luckily i'm here but there were sleepless nights i thought, what would it be like to be dead. so -- >> the dead listened with her ice. their voices heavy with regret drop like grain on deaf pavements where children listen and trace their shadow. they dance memorize steps on wooden stairways.

they sleep with their eyes open dreaming of half eaten cake. low hum of a car radio. the feel of water. the taste of skin. thank you. [applause]. closing out our evening of readers is ahn wa received msa of creative writing. and the ardela literary composition prize in creative nonfiction. her work has been published in several an tholologies including our cheers to muses. in addition to writing and performing she published and hand bound artist books and is a

photographer and print maker. lives and creates in oakland. i would like to introduce ahmwa. [applause] flesh of my flesh. the woman who invented clothes was a woman. she knew the power of a well placed leash. knew there was no looking back. once man laid himself upon her he was cleave into her. need the clay of her. she knew then shield always need a sheath. a shield from shame. the early pain of having been divided. >> first sin. forgive me for coveting my

mother's breast until it bled iodine to deceive me. 165. you cried when i left for california. you and bastand figure the driveway. i didn't expect that from you. wasn't prepare for the weeping that would last until i cross the the state border. when i got to oakland my emotions leaked like a wildfire. they are the kind that destroy you, your security your shell. it almost killed me the home sickness the longing and anger that flawed itself into a stone in my throat. 165 days until i see you again. how many days in a semester. how long before i can go home? sometimes you need to burn

everything to begin a new and here there are no science the deaths are not as severe the pure ifkification not complete. to let the natural of the sun have it's way with me. to feel the tips of grass force through the ashes of earth the complicated earth that seechls soft at the surface and yet so deep. that is how i feel the hidden layers of hardness, liquid and flame. can anything survive at the core. must i always hold people at a distance never let them settle inside me. mother there is not enough room for me in your womb. that's why i left. to seek a home a place where i could grow. 165 miles i crieds, 165 times i

missed you today. 165 meals that did not satisfy. 165 was not the number of my dorm room. 165 dollars for a 1 way ticket. 651 the area code home. >> this is a record. phone rings, a set in mother tone asks, what are you eating, how are you getting around? warns me to lock all the locks on the door. my voice plays over and over half truths with fragmented vietnamese. i don't tell her that the locks have already been locked the click, click change of chain to groove. i don't tell her about my fear. i don't tell her i can't lock out the sirens, smut and

paranoia of taxi cabs. the tortured baby crying scents of yeast from the bagel shop. extremes of heat and fall and unexpected rain. i don't tell her that hearing the weariness of her voice i can feel her flannel nightgown wet with my tierce much the smell of ponds cold cream makes me sad. how i long to wrap my arms around her warm bell e. instead i say, i'm fine. eating, taking subway. i don't tell her that today i wept over a bowel of ph o. >> 100 degrees cellsius. there is no going back you and i. like broth clouded by the blood.

so this next poem is actually in the tears to me antholology. a vietnamese woman artist, composure you name it she does it. i wonder if she bakes i never asked her but. this is a buddhist heart. each time i burned my body for you my heart remanipulained in . i watched the saffron flames engulf me seer my skin, flesh of a plum stripped of it's peel. tender and glowing like mars, i would rise to the sky for you to see me. in those moments i was your

torch and we were united. united by the scents the heat the shutter. for love of another i'd say to myself, faithful in muted pain. my hope, my heart extinguishing as you stood there paralyzed each time like a still camera unable to look away. infraction. if my love were smooth and lustrous would you spit me open and fill me up again. would you kiss the scar you made of me name it and claim me like a mountain. bear witness to holiness where 2 rocks collide. if my was unpenetrable and clear would you search your whole life

destroying me just to hold me to the light? i am listening you like rain that slips through fingers missing you like childhood dreams and mother's mill ik. like an earing under a bed. links of moon that pass. with years reflected in glass. the silver seams behind eyes. if you happen to find my love hidden in the openal of your memory, would you return my uncertainty? my last poem, i'd like to dedicate to all the people who have ever lost someone that they love. and as nancy said you get to a certain age and people start passing away. and it's kind of bizarre when

you lose a parent and realize you are a member of some strange society where no one understands how you feel. i want to say this is something that i'd like to share. inheritance. you were stubborn until the end. i felt your spirit tremor in my hand, your fears gach. the hospital room was filled with ice witnesses that denied me the last thing imented from you to lay curled with you alone once more. to be a girl again and feel the balloon of your belly rise and fall. pat your cheeks soft as apcots. hear your breathing soothe me to sleep. that day i wrapped my arms around the shirt necessary your closet still hanging i felt them

fill my grieve felt them hallow in your absence much the waling never ends inside and sometimes i think i have lost you like a hat. misplaced you in the messiness of my surroundings. you see, your stubbornness was woven into me woven into the clothes we both wore. strands that decide where we shared resistance, pushed needles. that's how i held on to you how a sewed myself to your side a seam raised into a scar at the end. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you. thank you. i have um... thank you and peace be with you. there's three mike's here so i don't know if i should put this down. um... before i start, i've had the great honor to - i love to talk at schools. k through graduate school and one question i ask children in america is i ask them how many of you have talked great detail to your grandparents or elders

or fore father's about world war ii or the depression or vietnam or civil rights movement, or perhaps if your parents or grandparents came from another country and settled here what it's like. only five to ten percent of the ands come up. if i asked that same question in afghanistan or pakistan or africa 90% of ands come up and i think the as great tragedy we've lost that oral tradition and a rich tradition about folklore and heritage and faith and heritage. to honor that today i'd like to share with you a little story. it's a hard cover book that came out in march of 2006. anybody have a hard cover. wave it up here. you might not want it after i say this. i got to pick the title.

three cups of tea but viking told me they would pick the subtitle and they picked one man mission to fight terrorism one school at a time. i objected because obviously there's- ways to fight tear riz m with education but i said i do this to promote peace and i started 8 years before 911 and this is about promoting peace through education. i've worked afghanistan and pakistan many years and i said we need to have a tribal council. i went to manhattan in the fall of 2005 and the big boss of the whole group, nancy shepherd and carlin coburn in publicity. we met in a little room and i stated my case and they said, this is your first book so you need to listen to a few things here. first of all only 12 percent of

nonfiction books make a profit and 2/3 are pre chosen by the publisher. we'd like to put our marketing arm behind us but your having to fight tear riz m to this. since i grew up in africa and worked pakistan for many years you never settle a deal without driving a hard bargain so i said if the hard cover doesn't do well, i'd like the subtitle changed later on for the paper back. julia and our other board relently pounded away month after month. i was in pakistan of december of 2006 and there was a new editor on the book and they said they decided to change the title to one man's mission to promote peace. the hard cover didn't do that well. sold 20,000 copies.

while the paper back came out on january 30th of this year and since out it's been on the new york times best seller selling over 700,000 copies now. and it's one man's mission to promote peace. and they're still baffleed manhattan because they're scratching their heads the first month because there's only - well no big city book editor did it so to be a best seller you need new york times or the chronicle or boston globes to give you good book reviews. no national t.v. or, m pr so paul said what's going on out there. i said, you know this is what i think it's about book clubs and women's groups, synagogues, mosques and churches and an incredible amount of book clubs here in the bay view area and

about people yearning for piece and looking for the answers of peace. any ways it's been really incredible and aspire together see people from all walks of life i really think can re late to promoting peace one child at a time. we got some news last month that the pentagon purchased 5,000 copies. let me finish it. and it's for counter intelligence training, 101 and mandatory reading for they're course encounter intelligence. this is in tan sa any a. i went there when i was three years old and my father founded a medical center and my mother started a school. it was a wonderful childhood. i went to school with children from two dozen countries.

with jews and christians and hindus and for me that was the way the world was. finally it came time to come back to america. i was in high school and really looking forward to coming back to a place whether i heard about fourth of jewels lies anulies . i got beat up. they said you're not from america. it wasn't in africa that i learned about racism but here in united states. we were completely broke and i did something real unpopular at the time. four days after high school i joind the united states army. not only to serve my country but to get the,gi bill to continue my education.

then i saw young men and women from all across america. from farms and ranches and it matedm made me realize the strength in this country is not from commonality but our great diversity. i had a younger sister named gift of god and christa was a special girl because she suffered from severe epilepsy. she never once complained. she never said across word and it could or would take her an hour or two to line um... up her clothes and do our homework and get her lunch b bag ready. i'm the five minutes bed to - bus kind of guy, you know? well krista saw the baseball movie called field of dreams.

very inspiring movie that takes place in the corn field in iowa and decided for her 23rd birthday she wanted to go see that place. she was living in minneapolis and packed her bags to go to the field of dreams. when my mother went to wake her up on july 24th 1992 she had died in her sleep from a massive seizure and it was devastating for all of us. i was climbing quite a bit and roaming around quite a bit and every summer i would take a month and do something with her. every year we could go to disneyland and i took her to yosemite. it was very special to do that with my sister. at the time i was climbing a lot, i thought i'm going to pick a big bad mountain to climb in honor of krista.

she had an amber necklace she got on the indian ocean coast and i was going to take that and put it on top of,k 2. when i went to,k 2 to climb a mountain and instead a found affair greater mountain to climb. here's the world's second highest mountain. you can put 84, monthe horns here to fill it up. i hope there's no outdoor retailers. two season family camping tents from logan you at the this tenth is a french league on eres tenth designed for the sahara. this came from north face prototype tenth called the wind tunnel. it was 20 years old when we took it to,k 2. here's our mottly

crew of 12 climbers. the gentleman in the white shirt left after one week after he found out there's no alcohol in pakistan. i don't tell you anymore where he's from, but this is - what is this doug? deadly. avalanche. we call this the mother of all avalanches a year after desert storm. intense from spain and you can see the guys running out in their underwear. fortunately nobody was killed in this avalanche. this is the art memorial in honor of, art gillke. we climbed a lot at night and these for tops of pots and pans that have been carved out in the names of climbers that died on this mountain. we climbed at night and it's difficult because you can only

see ten feet for front of you and 6,000s of feet below we heard plates clanging against the rocks and i thought really is this a good way to honor my sister. finally 78 days later it was time to go home. i was weak, exhausted and emaciated but most of all i felt that neck la l necklace and i ft her down. anybody that read the book can you remember what the first chapter is called. it starts with an,f, failure. that's another thing they really objected to in manhattan. said you can't start a book with the word failure. at least i won that argument. i said you know, our success is originally based in failure and you know what? all of us make mistakes and all of us sometimes fail.

sometimes with relationships or investments or fail with jobs. um... i flunked my first driving test when i was 16 and totald the car while parallel parking and some student wills not get into college. really when you fail it's not the end of the road. it's more of an opportunity and away to find a different path. when i come to those moments in life, i think of the perz yen proverb that says when it's dark you can see the star. for those of you that have been there, i failed get a really good sunset picture on,k 2. this is actually a volcano in mexico but i love this climbing photo to end the climing sequence. so, here's our dirt bag climbers. done with the climb and it's

time for me to head back to berkley. i was very weak and fortunately, we were still alive. that year five of 12 climbers that ascending died during the descend. i had to walk five days back to the nearest village to catch a jeep back to civilization. as i got to the village a string of kids started grabbing on to me and as i got near there was a stout, gruff man with a silver grin and he looked at me and he said peace be with you and then he looked at me and shook his a had had and said chiz l.a. i'm from the midwest and the best translation is what the heck. i was skruf if i and looked pretty bad and he said, son, i'd like you to come to our village but first, you need to take a

bath. so, i went down to the river, very filthy, a washed up and we went for tea. in that sorry lame i learned many things. one out of three children there dies before the age of one. usually dehydration or diarrhea induced dehydration. many young men have left the villages to try and get jobs as dishwashers in the cities or work on construction crews or work for foreign climbers and they often have to pull they're resources and sell they're goats and land to bribe somebody. for who is left behind is the women and they say now they're workload has doubled over the last two decades. i walked into this stli ladies and gentle village and we had yet to have three cup office tea with each other.

first cup your a stranger, second cup a friend, and third cup you become family but the process take many years. here in american we have two minutes football drills and 6 second sound bites and 30 minutes power lunches and really it's about three cups of tea and really it's about relationships. i asked about a school and i know thisd the kids disappeared and i asked about school and they were very embarrassed and finally took me behind the village and i saw 84 children sitting in the dirt during school lessons. five girls and 79 boys and writing with sticks in the sand. i've seen a lot of poverty in africa but when i saw those kids and a young girl came up to me and - it was a cold autumn day and he or she said will you help us build a