THE PALACE OF WAX, THE LAND OF THE BURNING SUN, THE PRAYER OF THE UNBOR

Naheed, Kishwar

English

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Kunapipi Volume 19 Issue 3 Article 26 1997 Kishwar Naheed and her Poetry COMMENTARY AND TRANSLATION FROM URDU BY SHOAIB HASHMI Kishwar Naheed Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi  Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Naheed, Kishwar, Kishwar Naheed and her Poetry COMMENTARY AND TRANSLATION FROM URDU BY SHOAIB HASHMI, Kunapipi, 19(3), 1997. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol19/iss3/26 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: research-pubs@uow.edu.au Kishwar Naheed and her Poetry COMMENTARY AND TRANSLATION FROM URDU BY SHOAIB HASHMI Abstract THE PALACE OF WAX, THE LAND OF THE BURNING SUN, THE PRAYER OF THE UNBORN This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol19/iss3/26 152 Kishwar Naheed Kishwar Naheed and her Poetry COMMENTARY AND TRANSLATION FROM URDU BY SHOAIB IIASIIMI Perhaps Kishwar Naheed can best be introduced by repeating two things her friends have had to say about her. Some time ago, a friend and fellow poet Zahid Dar touched a chord in Klshwar's many, many friends and admirers when he called her 'The Phoolan Devi of poetry'! Phoolan Devi is of course the noted 'Bandit Queen' of India who led a troop of actual bandits for many years and still stands accused of many crimes. Yet she has so caught the imagination of the people that she has gained a public pardon for her alleged crimes and been elected member of parliament. Later on when some of the friends, including Zahid, got together to offer Kishwar written tributes, they called the volume 'Naye Zamanay Ki Birhan'. That needs some explaining. 'Birhan' is an Urdu/l Iind1 word meaning a lamenting woman; but, with frequent use in poetry, it has taken on the more serious and more profound sense of a Cassandra and a Niobe rolled into one. And so the title of the book refers to her as 'Niobe for a New Age'. The first tribute recognizes her energy, dynamism and great effectiveness as one of the leading activists for every good cause, in particular the cause of women; the second recognizes the role she has assumed as the most significant poetic voice in the struggle of Pakistani women for their rights, a struggle which reached monumental proportions during the years of dictatorship and came to symbolize the larger national struggle again~;t the imposed tyranny. The three poems I have selected for translation - on pure instinct, I might add - seem, without design, to mirror the three major aspects of Kishwar's poetry. 'The Palace of Wax' is a sort of prologue, with its very delicate and very understated image of the oriental woman and her centuries-old legacy of meek acceptance. 'The Land of the Burning Sun' is Kishwar the oriental woman woken from her sleep, it is Kishwar the activist, the protester, the anti-colonial, the feminist whose meek acceptance has been transformed into awareness and pride and a passion. And the third, 'The Prayer of the Unborn', is just the sort of poem that defines Kishwar's place right at the forefront of the movement - for her poetry is very much the poetry of protest and of lament, and yet the protest has come to encompass all the issues which are the concern of thinking people today. And it always, always leads to a soaring hope! Nahccd and her Poetry PALACE OF WAX I was betrothed mother would cry out in her sleep that would wake me I would wake her too and ask her what ailed her she would stare out with empty eyes could never remember her dreams And then one night she did not cry out she held me to her in her fear when I asked her she opened her eyes and said a silent prayer 'I dreamt that you were drowning and I plunged into the rushing waters to save you'. And that night lightning struck and my cow and my fiance were burnt. Then one night she was asleep and I was still awake and I saw she was opening and clenching her fist over and over and it seemed she wished to grasp something then tired of trying then gathered up her courage and tried again ~I woke her but she did not tell me her dream and that was when I lost my sleep too And then I came to live in another house and my mother and I both cry out in our sleep and if someone asks, we tell them, 'We cannot remember our dreams!' 153 154 THE LAND OF THE BURNING SUN My land is the land of the burning sun perhaps that IS why my hands are so warm and my feet are so blistered and my being is so covered with sores My land is the land of the burning sun and that is why the roof of my home melted and fell Kishwdr and the walls are so hot that they singe everythmg they touch My land is the land of the burning sun is that why my children always thirst? and why I am always kept uncovered? My land IS the land of the burning sun perhaps that is why we never know of the gathering of the clouds nor of the passing of the deluge for my fields are ever laid waste now by the money-lenders, now by wild beasts and now by calamities and sometimes also by self-proclaimed masters Do not teach me to hate my own land of the burning sun for the same sun dries my washing in my courtyard and bears me a harvest of gold in the field Let me quench my th1rst at the rivers and rest in the shade of the shady trees let me make a garment of the soil and a covering of the dust 1 do not like the lengthening shadows of the evening for I have seen the glory of the rismg sun as it comes to spread its bounties across my land And the sun is mine and yours too but in different ways For I walk hand in hand with the burning sun. Kishwar Nahccd and her Poetry THE PRAYER OF THE UNBORN Even before I am born - hear my voice There are those who dip the rose in the saffron hue of bitterness and imprison the truth in the false tablets of stone Do not let them see me And before I am born- will you give me this assurance My ears will not be filled with words of a heathen faith my mother will not go in shame for having borne a daughter and the walls that men raise will be my home and not my prison and my being and swaddling cloth will not be used to write the saga of homelessness and want And before I am born - will you seek for me the sweet water- for which my forefathers toiled with the sweat of their brow and green grass- fragrant with the fragrance of my soil and shady trees - whose shade will be the doorway of my peace and blue skies - whose infinite expanse will be my refuge and the birds- whose very being will be my contentment And before I am born- will you forgive me all the sins which in this blighted forest they will commit in my name and in the name of my time wherein they will call my words and my thoughts u:e affliction of age and which they will commit tc, fill out their empty days And before I am born - will you teach me to recall the verdant gold of the paddy fields so I will not earn my bread in shame ... teach me to remember how to use my lips only to articulate the truth within me ... teach me how to feel the ties which tie myself to my fellow men ... teach me so to smile that the radiance will banish forever the darkness of the night Hear me - for I am unborn yet 155 156 ----There are those who think themselves gods m their own tyranny and greed ... Do not let them near me but gather up some tatter from some tattered being and make of it my mantle And before I am born - will you make me a promise you will not take me to the water which floods the dwellings and does not water the fields you will not show me the sunlight which nourishes the harvests of hunger you will keep me from the elders who trade even in their prayers you Will not give me a home in the town where people walk like skulking thieves in their own city And before I am born - will you promise me that I will not be born an old man that you will not rob me of the innocence of my childhood. 

Kishwar Naheed and her Poetry COMMENTARY AND TRANSLATION FROM URDU BY SHOAIB HASHMI

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Kishwar Naheed and her Poetry COMMENTARY AND TRANSLATION FROM URDU BY SHOAIB HASHMI

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