EPISTLE FROM THE KILLING FIELDS

 

(In memory of two Palestinian youths I befriended some time before one and half decades in Jeddah whose names I can't recall. Those who became silent as their colleagues animatedly discussed going back home for vacation. For my Face book friends Samirah Naim Khoury who share truths about Palestine reality, and Artist Fateh Gabin who reminds that still there are beautiful dreams there. The film Papa-2 by Gopal Menon on the plight of Kashmiri mothers searching their disappeared sons, and poet Gaddar's words on mothers who came to the agitation front demanding their sons vanished in the name of 'Naxallite hunt' in Thelingana also have inspired the poem.)

My friend, you ask me:
How in this land that smells of blood
from the killing fields
we still speak of flowers,
love the moon and the stars,
graze our white horses
in river basins and lush valleys,
and how under green bowers
our fulsome beauties
give ear to lyrics laden with love suits.

You cannot guess:
when our skies would be pierced
by bomber jets;
at which moment our tender kids,
on a trot with grasshoppers,
would be blasted into pieces;
when their armored vehicles
would rain death into
gatherings at our dinner tables;
and where they vanish into:
our full-blooded handsome youths.

My friend,
They call it war, yet it’s but slaughter.

They don’t spare  even fledgling in the womb;
our venerable sires are trampled
under their boots;
our grannies, descendents of Shehrezad
are being silenced
under their military might.

You ask me:
how we still sing our songs,
share our loves, and weave our dreams.

Yes,
This is the secret of our legacy,
our resistance as old as the earth.

Our poets:
they are not worshippers of
bubbling wine glasses in
air-conditioned havens.
Their poetry is born in
uncertainties of exile.
Our loves are no glass houses
meditating happy endings.
As  country beckons, we answer
even in secret moments of the nuptials.

See my friend, it still blooms in our valley:
those fragrant flowers.
Heart-colored apples and
golden apricots are still ripening
in our groves.
Our brooks are still running full
in crystal-clear streams.
Our agile horses and gorgeous herds
are still happy with
abundance of their grazing fields.

One day
their kids would question them:
Why did you decimate those
who were to be born with us?
Why did you incur the curse
of their mothers upon us?
That day,
kids on either side of the barricades
would kiss each other’s cheeks.
They would sing, hand in hand,
new songs of joy over
finding their missing kin
they would dance together in these streets;
the male kids on either side
would extend hands of courtship
towards the girls on the other side.
That day,
they would return:
those who died for us,
those who stirred in our veins
our cherished dreams.