Written To Not Remain

Named Raha in Libya, Sheromilli in Cyprus and Asiab dasti in Iran. The ancient tradition of millstone grinders is one of the early technological tools humans invented to harvest seeds of their labour. In Eastern and African cultures, it nurtured a communal momentum within ecological ecosystems, giving birth to a genre of oral literature by elderly women whose hums, chants and poetry around the Raha form rhythms of resistance, lament, pride and indigenous knowledge of multiple mother tongues. The Raha becomes the instrument, a body of resonance and the medium in the ritual, two women would rotate the stone repetitively while singing and reciting notions of the land and its people, cosmological predictions and anti-colonial storytelling.