Kunan Poshpora (The Tragedy Of Rape Being Used As A Weapon) Poem by Nida Nawaz

They used rape as a weapon
Before the gunpowder, they planted
Their false flag of victory upon women's bodies
The earth did not yield blood
It spewed the ashes of a shamed sky

Every scream echoing through the air of KunanPoshpora
Was 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 its broker journalists
Wiped the stains of blood
From the Constitution with its gloves

But the court of history
Never forgives anyone

*
The two twin villages of KunanPoshpora
Surrounded by men in uniform
They grew iron claws
Upon the forehead of the night
Then measured women's bodies
With their boots
As though they were a map of war

Every scream, suspended in the sky
Is a poster of protest
The earth hid testimonies
In its womb together with the pain

The rivers carried not water
But the salt of sobs
And one day history
Will write the highest testimony of all

*
They wanted the bodies of the women
To become the smallest page in history

They drove iron nails
Into the eyes of the night
The moon drowned
In its own blood
Was a witness

Every scream became
The final flutter of a bird
Trapped inside stone.l

The wind kept searching for justice
Among the threads
Of torn scarves

But where do memories ever turn to ashes
The remains alive
Generation after generation.

*
First they broke
The fingers of dawn
Then they stamped
The seals of lust upon women's bodies

They thought that once the blood flowed
The memories would flow away with it
But every drop beneath the soil
Became a red letter

The roots of the chinar
Learned to read them
The rivers carried them
All the way to the sea

Now whenever the wind
Passes through a deserted courtyard
It does not scatter ashes
Instead the history
Opens its grammar.