Translator’s note: Kishwar Naheed is identified as a distinct voice in modern Urdu poetry. Her tone is individualistic but it has the echo of the widest collective experience: ‘Meri aavaaz, mere shahr ki aavaaz hai/Meri aavaaz, meri nasl ki aavaaz hai (My voice is the voice of my city/My voice is the voice of my generation). Her work not only reflects her own personal journey as a poet and feminist, but also acts as more than her autobiography — it is the voice of a whole generation which came of age in the 1960s (both during the dictatorship of Ayub Khan in Pakistan and broader currents of resistance across the Third World). In her poetry, Naheed has universalised her Pakistani identity by striving to gather together the sorrows and travails of all the women of the Third World.
The Bounty of the Body
‘When my spirit would take the wing
That body would be such a verdant thing
In which my brain will be put in place
And that heart
When in some body begins to palpitate
Then the flutes will reverberate
I will want that my tongue
Be put in place
In the mouth of the truth-teller
The day the despair from some blind eyes
Does scatter, from my eyes
Such that they smile in wonder
Upon seeing every rainbow colour
How happy will my spirit be
That distributing life and light, my body
Will perish in mortality.’
Kishwar Naheed Must Live
‘Kishwar Naheed is a dense tree
Which grows on the road on its own, all by itself
And extends its shadow across the way
Exhausted travelers rest under its shade
Birds’ nests hang from its branches
In which their eggs and progeny are protected
Songs echo when the wind passes through its leaves
Its branches rustle in silence
And whisper
Look, we have held the moon
If you want you can go far in the moonlight
Its trunk is sunk in the earth
Its roots have sprouted from the soil
And go within the deep waters
Kishwar Naheed has no daughter
But she knows how to be a mother to one
Kishwar Naheed is alone
But she knows how to give support
Kishwar Naheed is a woman
And can speak the truth
Can take poison
Can adorn the gallows
Kishwar Naheed is that spirit which must live.’
Asma! You are Immortal
‘Asma! Today a crack developed in the rampart of your city of Lahore
Mischievous and cunning, barbarism’s purveyors
Seem to be happy today at your passing
They were happy even that day
When HasanNasir, Faiz and the Bhutto family
Were sent to Allah Miyan (on the way to immortality)
Allah Miyan then saw, the same Satans
Sometimes Mashal, sometimes Naqeeb
And sometimes hacking young girls to pieces
They were congratulating the latter for saving honour
But God is not without justice
Asma the princess of peace!
You were hit by so many black wind gusts
How many poisonous bullets fired, like locusts
But you were saved because
In that, sobbing faces from place to place
Were waiting in anticipation
For your smile
Without a guile
They say spirits remain in motion through reincarnation
So much so that they achieve purification
Your restless but pure spirit Asma!
The bruises on the faces of all people dwelling in dust
Will change into light, gentle, fresh buds if they must
In all the ruined settlements
Hearing your footsteps daily
The sad and lightless eyes verily
Will light up
All the masters of the worship of torture
Will become extinct
But your spirit!
What to talk of sometimes, but often with the voice of the bird
And around the whole world
With the clouds roaring
Will be with us standing!’
Who Will Be Their Messiah
‘I was not born in Paradise
That I am the progeny of the earth is surely no surprise
Children like me of all the villages and country-wise
Shuffle and thrive in the earth barefoot, it is true to surmise
When the sixth or seventh child is born
Our mothers pass on
A new mother comes on
Neither my father sitting in the village congregation
Nor my mother, her elbows on the wall
With the neighbour, engaged in conversation
Bother to remember the advertisements about Corona
Running on the television
We are indeed waiting
That when the seller of sweet and sour candies
Will be arriving
And we savour, now gram, then tamarind and sometimes candy
Each costing a ten penny
And playing just like that we grow old
Had the schools been open, the teacher might have told
What do we know about Corona, for the schools are closed!
Coming towards the city, then on every square
With their hoes and spades, and headlong stare
The workers of every age with broken sandals, feet almost bare
That someone hire them for a daily wage
Or on an especially kind day, assuage
By telling them while going away that because of Corona’s mounting pillage
We will come another time, anther age
They all ask each other
What has our wage to do with Corona, what a bother!
Upon reaching home, the mother presents him with the stale bread
Together with pickle to complete the daily spread
She asks, ‘What of the daily wage’
‘Corona’. He grumbles with rage
The four children holding the stale bread
Fall asleep immediately upon hitting the bare bed
The father lighting a cigarette, taking a puff
Says, ‘Hye when will this Corona be off?’
From the nomadic gypsy huts, the smoke spews
Giving off some good news
That today there will be fresh bread to eat
The mosquitoes over the hut dancing as if to a beat
And listening to the sounds of crickets below in the summer heat
The children after eating go into a sleepy retreat
There is a single TV in this whole settlement
Which all the women see for entertainment
But man or woman, no one indeed hears of Corona’s destructive impairment
From Iran to Milan there is no dearth
Of people dying daily, people being buried under the earth
In our raw settlement, even the news of the dead does not arrive
But one news indeed does thrive
That of a scene
Where only pigeons circling around the Great Mosque and the revered Kaaba can be seen.’
Noor and Her Spirit’s Narrative
I am Noor’s spirit
I was feeling very hurt and insulted
That is why I did not speak before
To defame girls
Or to murder them is no novelty
But how while killing Noor, in installments
His lunacy
Did not reduce in intensity
He would keep telling his friends and parents proudly
And like a football, kept playing with Noor’s head
If I tell the truth
At the time he had dragged Noor, bleeding, to the top of the stairs
At that time, I had very much emerged from her body, becoming a scream
That cruel devil
As many wounds as he could
Put on that spiritless body
I could not bear to watch even that
Noor’s fresh flowing blood
Was giving heat
I was burnt
I turned my face to look
Noor holding her severed head was calling out
Hopeless young boys and girls searching for the way forward!
Demolish the walls of fear within you
Come forward
Remove the blindfold from the eyes of justice
Before some other Noor
Is butchered like me
Make the name of justice respectable
These lowborn officers
Are not letting my nation full of anger come outside
Had I had my way I would blow up their skull
My severed head is placed on my hand
Make it a flag, tell the world.
The essay and the poems are part of our Poetry Special Issue (January 2022), curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of this essay or the poems exclusively featured here should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.
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