Our Mother's Head Scarf Poem by Nida Nawaz

When they visit us at night,
Never do they knock at our doors,
They just break them open to enter.
Dragging our fathers by their Beards,
Pulling away the headscarf of our Mothers,
They ask us to stand naked before each other,
shame sobs,
mutual relations get strewn….

What if they hide their faces?
We identify them
from the pages of some old Books,
From the childhood memory of time spent together in the playground,
From the chair lying in the office,
From the shared swing rides of childhood,
And From amongst the students of the classroom.
Snakes just creep and move in our childhood playground.

The man sitting in the chair in our office,
looks like YAMA (The lord of death) now.
The rope of our childhood swing too has burnt itself in the blaze.
Sometimes under that dark cloth covering their faces,
We see the face of that boy as well,
The boy whom we had taught
When he entered the school.

When they come,
they just drag any person,
Drag him far away from his house,
Drag him away from the family,
And later for all to see,
Nothing more than his dead body hanging from an
Apple tree,
The body dumped near some crossing,
With their names engraved on the back
Before killing,
Names engraved in the language of terror,
Written in words of fire,
Written with red hot iron rods.

When they visit us at night,
Never do they knock at our doors,
They just break them open to enter.
They come to trample
our culture,
our honour
and
our relations
underneath their feet ……………..
(Hindi Poem -English translation by Autar Mota)
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