I am the bare Pakistan
Syed Muzammil
I am Pakistan’s disaster,
I am Pakistan’s reluctance,
I am Pakistan’s prejudice,
I am Pakistan’s vehemence.
I am that blazing ferocious sun, which strikes only the poor of Karachi and pardons the rich,
I am that torrent of monsoon flood that demolish the house of the peasant, overlooking the palace of the landlord nearby,
I am that dancing death in a farmer’s house whose seeds the government didn’t buy,
I am that wrath of God destined for the weak only.
I am the falsified history which is being taught to the students,
History which glorifies the tyrants and undermine the real sons of the soil,
I am the bellicose politician’s instinct of felony; felony that loots a nation,
I am that broken oath on the Holy Quran, a testimonial of a military general that he will not intervene in politics.
I am that wand of a serviceman which he uses against his own countrymen,
I am that constitution, which he shatters and diminishes,
I’m the defence budget; it’s a taboo to bat an eye on me,
I hide behind that prejudice against Balochistan, and that stigma of suppression of its humiliating voices.
I am that stolen baby from a children’s ward that left my mother with hue and cry,
The mother which carried him for nine months in her womb,
I am a poor man’s kidney; stolen and sold by a corrupt doctor,
I am the instinct of that barbarity, which makes a person steal dead bodies,
Dead bodies from unsafe cemeteries; from unsafe graves.
I am that urea, which is being adulterated in milk,
Milk that is fed to an infant; that runs in his veins,
I am the agony of a six-month-old baby being raped by a barbarian,
I am the vulnerability of an incarcerated man for a crime he didn’t commit,
I am a life wasted behind the bars in a jail cell.
I am the poison a homeless mother mixes in food to feed her kids and to herself,
That last fatal supper,
That defeated suicidal jump in the river,
I am the torpidity of a prostitute whose moans are considered as joy,
I am her numbness, her naiveness, her invisible dried tears.
I am that Islam, which is being saved by burning the colonies of the Christians,
I am that dollar-sponsored jihad that took our sons for good,
Jihad that filled the pockets of the oligarchs,
I am the clandestine face of its pseudo intelligentsia,
I am its mainstream, which turned out to become the lame-stream,
I am its hypocrisy.
I am Aamir Liaquat’s fancy branded dress, the dress he wears whilst lecturing about the simplicity in Islam,
I am Junaid Jamshaid’s beard, which made him escape the accusations of blasphemy,
I am Asma Shirazi’s symbolic scarf, which never covered her head,
I am Bilal Qutab’s tasbeeh that he rocks whilst wearing his Armani suit,
I am Bilawal Bhutto’s surname, borrowed from the mother, the only one of its kind.
I am Salman Taseer’s blasphemy, punctured by the bullets of Mumtaz Qadri,
I am Mubashir Luqman’s hoopla breaking news, nobody believes me.
I am the tumultuous citizen, searching for my culprit,
I am the lost patriotism, the lost philanthropy and the lost nationalism that once nurtured into the heart of this country,
I am a lost dimension,
I am a forgotten ideology,
I am an unworthy sacrifice,
I am the bare Pakistan!
I am the lost patriotism, the lost philanthropy and the lost nationalism that once nurtured in this country
tribune.com.pk