In the jungle of the Upper Paraná, the prettiest butterflies display their black wings enlivened by red or yellow spots, and they flit from flower to flower without worry. After thousands upon thousands of years, their enemies have learned that these butterflies are poisonous. Spiders, wasps, lizards, flies and bats admire them from a prudent distance.
On this day in 1960, 60 years ago, three activists against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic were beaten and thrown off a cliff. They were the Mirabal sisters. They were called ‘Las Mariposas’ or ‘The Butterflies’. This brutality took place fewer than two weeks after another incident under another brutal dictatorship, thousands of miles away in Pakistan. The brutal murder and disappearance of the communist leader Hasan Nasir under the Ayub Khan dictatorship on November 13.
In memory of the slain sisters, in memory of their indelible beauty, today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
In contemporary South Asia, brutal honour-killings are regular. Karo-kari is a type of premeditated honour killing, which originated in rural and tribal areas of Sindh, Pakistan. Here homicidal acts are primarily committed against women who are thought to have brought dishonour to their family by engaging in pre-marital or extra-marital relations. Contrary to popular opinion, these honour killings are more a function of cultural and feudal mores rather than having anything to do with religion.
To mark this important occasion, I am presenting original translations of two recent poems by two of South Asia’s greatest living women Urdu poets, Zehra Nigah and Kishwar Naheed. Both poems were published in 2018 and relate to the practice of honour killings.
Nigah’s poem titled Sindh Ke Aik Be-naam Qabaristan Ke Naam (‘To A Nameless Cemetery of Sindh’) is from her collection Gul Chandni (‘Gardenia’, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2018). In the subtitle, she informs us that the cemetery of the title is where Kari (black or blackened) women are buried according to tradition. Nigah invokes the legendary Sufi saint of Sindh, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai who is beside her slain heroines. This is because Bhittai has celebrated and commemorated the seven heroic women of the Indus Valley in his verses. In a similar way, Amrita Pritam too had invoked the bard of Punjab, Waris Shah, to honour slain women in her haunting partition poem Aj Aaakhan Waris Shah Nu (‘I say to Waris Shah today’).
‘There are many mounds of earth The ones hidden in the mounds Are girls without a mark or trace. Every evening Bhittai the master comes here Comes and sits after squandering The pearls of tears on all of them And the fragrance of his consolations Springs from the depths of the earthen desolations. He says, you my daughters Will not be without name or trace This will rather be the fate of those Who have surrendered you without a bath or a shroud To the earth’s repose He says the culprits of love Have indeed always suffered But like my poetry They too have always attained immortality. You are that song of my art Which I am writing with the blood of my heart.’
Meanwhile, Kishwar Naheed’s poem Kari Qabaristan Ki Sadaaen (‘The Cries of the Kari Cemetery’) is longer and is from her collection Shireen Sukhni Se Pare (‘Away from Sweet Talk’, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2018). In contrast to Nigah, it is a masterful soliloquy of the Kari with her murderers:
‘What was my crime Just this to put henna on my hands sometime Then sometimes on my own while alone Moving my bangles and legs Gathering the blooming buds Of my dreams and joys And laughing My father and brother Saw, moved forward And seized my throat Those who saw had told That the marks of the veins of my neck Had been imprinted on their fingers. Baba, the one who you had nursed Watching her wither like a red leaf Prostrating in gratitude You never even sweated You never even buried me They were some strangers definitely Who brought me to the Kari cemetery. Now when the evening arrives From the grave every uncomfortable dream thrives In the whole cemetery the lamps of desires Light so many fires Those who were released from life With their Saanval in the name of honour They had been buried as they were within the earth. Those who saw have told that every evening A pair of pigeons arrives at their grave for mourning. All the stars in the sky Are watched by angels from up high In the lanes, quarters and bazaars The people wearing higher turbans In the form of intoxicated slogans Speak in unison Upon a girl being made Kari “Thanks God! Our honour is still virgin.” Oh my God! Do you also consider my complaints To be my sins My mothers had covered me with many a curtain You had given me the power to raise my pen Upon all patriarchal, so-called men Now to those who behead, do teach a lesson Open the bundle of the day when The wish of my Punoon, my Ranjha, my Umar be fulfilled Grant me again the twitter of parrots Give me, not a black shroud But a striped scarf, which is embroidered!’
(Raza Naeem is a Pakistani social scientist, book critic and award-winning translator and dramatic reader currently based in Lahore, where he is also the president of the Progressive Writers Association. Article courtesy: The Wire.)
