How long has it gone on for? I have lost count of the days and the months And the number of times Facts and fiction have been combined Made to stand hand in hand By the gentiles that stain these lands Caricaturizing, miming scenes Of zealotry and genocide
I have lost count Of the number of hospitals bombed Ruins atop tunnels where the Khamas abound And the aid workers killed Unidentified dangrerous women and men And the journalists sniped With their arsenal of 1984 daggers and knives And the doctors shot With nitroglycerin bombs hidden in their surgical gowns And the men raped in prisons With propagandist lore stuffed up their intestines And the women maimed Their bellies heavy with terrorist babes And the children killed Starved and stilled Their sinful blood spilled On the promised land
How long before this evil doth cease How long before the chosen ones can finally live in peace?
(This piece is about limitations, both physical and mental on women. It is about a woman dealing with the biology of her own body in an environment that has disgraced and stigmatized it.
This piece has also been accepted as part of the 2024 Women Scream anthology, a platform that unites voices for violence against women and is celebrated on international women’s day across a number of countries).
Give me something to sleep Just for a while, a few hours maybe
What’s bothering you? This thing, this ungodly thing I’m sullied, impure again
Impure again? My insides are bleeding anew
Why are you whispering? Because it’s this dirty secret bound to me It keeps violating, assaulting me With such ravening regularity I have to beg my sister to visit (She has that freedom, that liberty) So she can come bearing these Brazen packs of sordid things The stigma! the cruel savagery Of having my womb constantly Bleed and weep and shame and sting
I see the look on my husband’s face When I can’t make his meals In Ramzan, or on eid (I can’t even iron his prayerful shalwar kameez*) I still recall - I cringe and I cry at the memory I couldn’t attend my little one’s very first Ameen* I had taught him his Alif Laam Meem* I couldn’t say I couldn’t tell them to move the day How could I! I hid in the shadows while my mother-in-law Did everything Hugging my child Lavishing him all the while With maternal love, where my love should have been Mine I had put away, hidden, unclean Until I was done with this bane But the occasion has gone like so many others When I was stripped of the soul of a mother That precious moment passed me by Even my father-in-law watched from jaundiced eyes His expression… such disappointment - such contempt The embarrassment! The torment! I wanted to die
The first fast is tomorrow and I bleed again I’m wretched, repulsive, tainted But I’m tired of hiding, melting away In the darkest recesses of the house I’m tired of playing cat and mouse With my dignity, my sense of self I’m tired of becoming invisible For a week every month, ceasing to be A mother, a wife, a human being I’m tired of fading, becoming a wraith I’m tired… I’m tired of this unholy plague
Give me something, something to sleep Give me something to fly me away On the quiet wings of eternal release.
Image: April Mansilla
*Shalwar kameez: tunic and pants worn by men and women across the greater Indian subcontinent.
*Ameen: term used to signify the event/ celebration when a child has finished reading the whole Quran.
*Alif, Laam, Meem: Alphabets that occur in the Quran. In this context, teaching the Quran with all its semantics.
Live in the moment, write a verse Sing a song for better or worse For those that are still around Still aground, that still abound Purrs New Zen in dulcet tones Cease to scruple, seize this time This time, say it out To the ones whose breath still vaults On quickening wings still topside Of the cosmic vault up high
But En-meshed and-mashed in So many things still intertwine Seethe and sizzle, yours and mine In gleaming lips and blistered minds O’er crowds of marigolds and mines In perfect storms come rain or shine In eggshell treads, blessings and all Around the holes within our whole Where things leak out, eke out, grow cold
Love poems can’t fit in, flit in To spaces filled with oxygen Rushing in and then out In bouts, in routs, in-halations Love in poetry is pos-thu-mous Past-the-mists of life’s bliss
Waiting pages like watching sages Stay pristine, unscripted. Cleaned By life-sodden exhalations While lungs and wrists and hearts replete With forgotten dyes wait to spill Nostalgic ink in clots and things In what-if meanderings, when No more breath is left to draw Shrinking wraiths on windowpanes When the dearth of death is overcome They sink their teeth into the sheets That flutter for their odes of love.
I see her sitting under the tree Dignified and serene even as she is encircled In the cumbersome arms of poverty. Destitution has cloaked her for many years From head to toe it has persevered. But still There are nuances of grace and light; Of a decorum that has bested the blight.
Sparse hair is pulled back into a little knot Threadbare clothes are mended and clean Calloused feet wear leather sandals Thousands of steps etched into their seams. She sits there solitary and separate Her expression is one of learned abjection As she labours on in her enterprise To live another day, to go on, to survive.
But every so often, when there is a lull In the cresting and falling human swell Where she sits, under the leafy canopy The wretchedness leaves her face And in its place Shines a serene and quiet majesty A poise, a stateliness Quietly they still linger in her being. Even as she sits under the tree To beseech, to plead, to request I can still see the queen.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 