An Apology

I’d like to apologize
For a crime so great
That it demands punishment severe
I am sorry
For being born
With the wrong chromosomes
In my defense, I wasn’t asked to choose
‘Would you like an XY or XX?’
‘My personal recommendation is XY,
It’s hot in the streets I hear!’
I apologize that my chest isn’t flat
And that my hips form curves
I do understand that my body
Invites attention,
In fact demands it!
So sorry if I didn’t take your crude passes
With a demure smile
But I know better now.
I apologize for my presence
In the public space
It must take a lot
Not to pounce on me.
So sorry that I provoke
The caveman in you
Every time I step outside.
I apologize for demanding
That my sister gets rights
‘cause, in the end she asked for it.
After all, it was her fault
That she was born a girl.

On my brother turning 18....

 My brother, Shereef (chepsy), turned 18 two days back. This is a letter/poem-ish thing I wrote for him...

Dear chepsy

When did you grow up?Just yesterday you were my 6 yr old annoying younger brother following me around,sometimes pulling at my pig tails and now, here you stand, a foot taller than me, telling me you are a grown up!

At 18, you

now feel at the top of the world. 'Man, I can do shit now!' I was you
a few years ago and boy was it exciting! Knowing that I'm 'no longer a kid'
You can drive, You can vote. You can tell mom and dad 'Don't tell me what to do, I'm an adult now'' (Which will be received with a rolling of eyes and a cut in pocket money)

But let me tell you, chepsy, being 18 is more than that
much much more
While a driving license in the pocket is awesome and waiting to vote is cool too
18 is not just the year of 'Being legal'
18 is the year when you just wanna know
everything and everyone
whatever moves under the sun!

On freshly pressed dreams
you will set out to conquer the world
Bring changes galore
Cause a revolution,
Make a BANG!

But 18 has other plans for you my boy!
'Cause 18 will also be the year
when you realize that revolutions aren't easy
And Big Bangs might just end up as Small Thuds
18 will let you know
that even though you can vote
You don't see the point
'Do I choose evil 1 or evil 2?'
You will ask yourself.

18 will be the year you discover,
with each day you will unravel yourself.
Your opinions will be stronger
your decisions more deliberate.
You will choose what you stand for,
'Cause you know you wanna be heard.

18 will be exciting, fun and all the things you wished it would be. But it's up to you to choose which way you take to make it worthwhile.

I won't wish you a 'Happy Birthday'.
'Cause I wish for you, my annoying, not so little, 'chappal' A 'Happy Every Single Day of Your Life'
I wish for you luck in finding your way through this messy place.
I wish for your resilience, to stand up and dust yourself after each fall, just to try again.
I wish for you wisdom in choosing the right friends and hope you won't take too many chances before realizing that a true friend is not the one who will join you in doing something wrong, he is the one who'll smack your head before telling you 'Dude, You need to get a life.'
Today, I wish for you Love. Love for the goodness in yourself and others.
I wish for you gratitude for letting God get you to the place you are in now.
I wish for all your dreams to come true (because, believe it or not, that's one of my dreams too)

And to wrap it all up, I wish that even if you grow gazillion inches taller, turn green and sprout purple horns , you will know that I'll still be here, ready to give you a hug.

Love,

Naz 

Just Stop

When you ask a question long enough it ceases to be one and just plays itself out in a loop like a broken record :

How? How? How? How. How. How.

Why?

Why? Why?  I keep asking myself. ‘Why?’ Why are we doing this to ourselves?  What’s so incredibly messed up in the brains of the ‘smartest living beings on the planet’ that makes us want to kill each other. To take down the ‘other’ and build a super market on his grave?

Bill Watterson said it right, the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it hasn't contacted us. If they do we’d probably shake their hands and stab them in the back when they sleep. Take their resources and pollute it till their kids starve into nothingness.

Sometimes I wish I weren't born. I wish I were the ocean or the sky...anything to stay away from this madness. But then I realize, this madness would still find its way to me. If I were the ocean they’d stain me with their blood; believe themselves purged by letting me bleed with their sins. If I were the sky they’d dissect me and make boundaries of me in the air, forgetting that I was never meant to be contained.

Sometimes I pray, really hard. You know that prayer when you just shut your eyes and forget about everything else around you? That prayer when you so desperately want something to happen that every atom, every cell in your body wishes for the same. I pray that we just stop.

Stop. Keep the guns down, loosen your grip on the enemy’s throat and just stay still.

Stop. Take a step back. Breathe.

And get out of your highly opinionated,  propaganda fed, socially conditioned mind and go over to the other side. I don’t care who you are- Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Christian, Pagan, Atheist.... Just get out of those self imposed shackles and learn to think, Feel and live the other person’s life.

Be him. Be her. Be them.

Be Jihad Misharawi who lost his 11 month old baby boy to a deadly strike. Be Mira Scharf who died, leaving 3 young kids, when commemorating the death of another. 

Be the people who live in fear every single second of every single day.

Just stop being you for a second.

Do you see it now? Do you feel it? His mother, your sister, their sons, Our daughters- Isn't loss still the same? Doesn't it still hurt as much?

So stop making pills of pain and feeding it to the ‘other’ because in the end the side effects will show on you more than anyone else.

Some links: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20354681
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/11/20121111152558908105.html

Grief

‘What does grief look like, mother?’
I stopped midway
My dishcloth hanging in the air
Foam dripping off my tired fingers
Into the messy sink
As she looked my way.

What do I say?

Do I unburden my life
Onto her innocent shoulders?
Or do I just brush it away?
But our lives have been brushed away enough
By rulers and informers,
Swept under the carpet
Hushing our painful cries
as they stamped our graves.
So I said,
‘My daughter, come here, hold my hand’
‘Let me walk you through my life
And show you what grief looked like.’

‘Grief looked like your aunt Yasmin's hands
when they beat her chest
as she saw her little Amir
Get blown into insignificance
As he stepped out the gate’

‘Grief looked like my neighbour Karim's face
when they marched into his house
And raped his pregnant wife.’

Grief is now settled
in the corners of my eyes
Sometimes rolling down my battered cheek,
Before penetrating me,
Again.
Look at me,
Grief is me. Every Single Day.

Stained Stories

My mama told me stories
Of a time when it didn't rain 
blood. 

When there were no walls
Or even shadows of fear
My mama showed me
Torn pictures, tinted brown,
Of a place so near, yet so far
A time removed
from this living hell.
A capture of what was
And never will be
Two little girls,
Arms intertwined,
Wide smiles warming the heart
But then she pointed to
A jagged corner with
A bloody stain and
Told me ‘They took her away’
My mama then cried in my arms
Just before they took me away

Broken

I was 7 when you came to see us. You, a visiting relative, came stocked with sweets, toys and tales aplenty. My brothers and I loved you, for you added colour to our bleak, dusty existence. You enthralled us with stories from- what was to us, the biggest wonder in the world- the city. Rapt, we would listen when you described the big buses which can carry A Lot of people at a time and how it can drive without stopping (Unlike our lazy bullock). We would watch you with wide eyed wonder as you showed with your arms stretched wide, how wide the roads are and run, clutching the end of your kameez, giggling, as you showed us how the trains run. We laughed when you told us about the People Of  The City sitting on a chair to pee and felt sad for the poor Women of the City who have so few clothes to wear that half their bodies are left uncovered.

I was so amazed by you, that when you came that night and asked me to come outside with you, I gladly obliged. I still remember how dark the night was and how tightly I held on to your hand as we walked into the bushes. I couldn’t contain my excitement, anticipating what new things you would show me this time. I was already preparing to wake my brothers up after we went back to tell them that you had chosen only me to give this special gift. And mid-dream you touched me. At first my cheeks, then my tiny chest…then with your groping fingers you undressed me. You did things which my 7 yr old mind couldn't grasp. I lay there, biting down the pain and holding back the screams…maybe I need to prove myself to deserve the gift? Surely there was a gift?

And then, when you were done, you got up and left. I lay there, in the bushes, bleeding, waiting for you to come back with the gift. You never came back.

The next day my father found me, lying naked, next to the bushes. He rushed back into the house and saw that you had left. He came back to me and jolted me out of sleep- A light dream where I was playing with a pretty doll you’d promised you would bring me. He woke me up and slapped me. Again and again and again. Then he sat down and cried as he pulled at his hair. I wanted to go and hug him, ask him what the matter was- but I was scared he would beat me up again. I stayed there till his loud sobs turned into whimpers and eventually died down. Then he picked me up, took me inside and wrapped me in a blanket.

I have stayed in ever since.

You visited me often, in my darkest nightmares. I run and you chase. Chase me with a doll…till I fall off a cliff and wake up in tears.

Yesterday was the last dream I had of you. 9 yrs. For 9 yrs I haven’t slept without seeing you in my dreams. I yearned to sleep without waking up. Without tearing up. Without knowing that I am torn. Forever, unmade.

So here I lie, floating in the river, dreaming blissfully of things other than you. 

Disclaimer: This is not my story. But it is the story of thousands of other girls, in India and around the world. A story which repeats itself everyday, taking with it lives of innocent girls, burying their dreams deep below.

The Unread

This is dedicated to Malala Yousufzai and thousands of other brave girls like her who put us to shame for our callousness as they tread fearlessly against atrocities. 




'The Unread'

It didn’t hurt
When you bombed my courtyard
Charring the peepal tree
Leaving a blackened swing
On a wounded stub.
It didn’t hurt 

When you scattered the roads
With severed heads and dismembered limbs
Colouring the streets red
Pumping the air with fear.
Then you decided
To hurt me, you’ll have to chain my thoughts
So you said I shouldn’t read
My eyes were for the home
And not for the ‘western dogs’ words
My mind was to stay confined,
Inside the four walls of ignorance
Too thick for resistance to penetrate
And make me think otherwise.
And then it hurt.
When you finally made me the unread,
Wilting midst the living dead.