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. 

‘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! 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!’

‘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.’

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.