Kunan Poshpora Poem by Nida Nawaz

(1)
They used rape as a weapon
Before gunpowder, upon women's bodies
They planted their false flag of victory

The earth did not bleed
It breathed the ashes of a shamed sky
In the air of Kunan Poshpora,
Every scream became a broken minaret
Whose call to prayer
Still trembles in the ears of history

Justice kept searching for a rope
In a blind well
While power, using complicit journalists
Wiped the stains of blood from its gloves
Onto the Constitution
But the court of history
Never forgives anyone.
............................................................
(2)
The twin villages of Kunan Poshpora
Were surrounded by uniformed men
Upon the forehead of night
They grew iron claws
Then they measured women's bodies
As though they were maps of war
With their boots

Every scream hanging in the sky
Became a poster of protest
The earth hid testimonies
Within her womb, along with pain
The rivers carried not water
But the salt of sobs

And one day history
Will write its loftiest testimony
From the ashes of these two silenced bodies.
.......................................................
(3)
They wanted women's bodies
To become the smallest page in history
They hammered
Iron nails into the eyes of night

The moon
Drenched in its own blood
Stood as a witness
Every scream became
The final flutter of a caged bird
Inside stone

The wind kept searching for justice
Among the threads of torn scarves.
But memories never turn to ash
They live on
Generation after generation.
...........................................................
(4)
First of all
They broke the fingers of dawn
Then upon women's bodies
They stamped the seals of lust

They thought that once blood flowed
Memories too would flow away.
But every drop
Turned into a crimson letter within the soil

The roots of the chinars read them
The rivers carried them to the sea
Now, whenever the wind
Passes through a devastated courtyard,
It is not ash that rises
Rather, history
Opens its grammar.