in memory
of afghani women
for those who are dead are blessed
shabnam nadiya
For a moment I thought it was just another bundle of old clothes
Until suddenly it made a movement
As if to prove to itself that there was still
Something living within.
Enshrouded without name, face or form
In dreary dreamless black (nothing elegant about this color)
It lay there heaped carelessly upon an empty bed
In an empty room
Like yesterday's laundry left there and forgotten.
I could find nothing of myself there
As, in a moment, that sluggish movement beckoned me
To join her in a sisterhood that should never be.
It scares me to even glimpse how interchangeable our lives have become
How the texture of your skin so easily blends with mine
How the roots of your hair dig deep into my scalp
How familiar my fingers feel as they caress the echoes of your mind
A hidden wall there is that pushes me back,
Something lies in wait
Something urges me on to conceive all your sins
My underbelly throbs with the pain of the birth that you now give
As the earth prepares for the deadly afterbirth.
They have slit open your breast
For all the world to see
How bloodless and quiescent your heart lies,
They have scraped your womb clean
Of any filth that may cling
They have picked your bones clean
Of other past sins.
They have healed you with a purifying wound that has finally cleansed you
Body and soul
Now that you are beautiful
You no longer need the sun's light to steal a look at
Who you once were
Or even at
What you might have become.
Woman of the bright air, you sear my eyes at a single glance
You engulf my mind whole
And every time you die
My rise from the ashes becomes ever distant.
about the author
Shabnam Nadiya (cassandra_bd@yahoo.com) is a writer, poet and translator. Her work has appeared in the anthologies Galpa: Short Stories by Women from Bangladesh (Saqi Books, UK), From the Delta, Different Perspectives: Women Writing in Bangladesh, The Escape and Other Stories, and 1971 and After (all from University Press Ltd, Bangladesh). Her prose, poetry and translations have also been published in various print and online periodicals including World View, Storyglossia, Bonfire, Texts'' Bones, The Beat, Words Without Borders, Cerebration, and Kali O Kalam. Recently, she won 3rd Prize at the Another Look Short Story Contest 2006 (Torrevieja, Spain). Nadiya lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh with her husband and daughter.
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