1945: my grandfather steps
off a train in Jammu & Kashmir.
drinks pani from the Muslim fountain.
my grandfather teaches
all the children in his village.
there are men
who won’t touch his hands,
afraid his Muslim blood dirty.
when he passes they bend
& pet the stray dogs instead.
–
1947: a Muslim man sips whiskey
& creates a country.
Jinnah’s photo framed & hung on the doors
of his believers.
freedom spat between every paan
-stained mouth as the colonizers leave
& the date trees dance
in Ramzan’s winds.
–
1947: in fall the birds
fly south for safety
to hide from the cold.
1947: in fall my family flocks
south to Pakistan for safety
to hide from their neighbors.
–
1945: the allies open
the camps in Germany
& the photos roll into America.
the westerners end their war
& declare: never again.
–
1947: a man sees a girl
crying as she begs for water
he stares for a while & then
lights her on fire.
–
1946: a woman registers to vote
& then registers her grandmother,
long dead.
she casts a ballot for India to stay united
changes into her grandmother’s
sari & casts the vote, again.
–
1947: the cannons sound during
Ramzan & everyone holds their breath
to find who survived. Laylat al-Qadr
births two new nations
no one knows the boundaries.
bodies spoon like commas, waiting
linking, waiting, linking.
–
2015: a Lahori naan seller
wakes to his old nightmare—
hacking a Sikh family to death.
he falls to his knees & pleads
Allah, forgive me. please forgive me.
–
1947: a woman washes the body
of a stranger lying on the street.
every dead woman blurs into another.
maybe she could be my sister she says
as she performs the ghusl, as her own
sister never returns home.
–
1943: famine spreads through
the British Raj.
in Bengal three million die
bones of skin, arms sharp as machetes.
–
1947: summer, in a Bihari marketplace
there’s nothing but sag & edible flowers.
lines of people crowd the center.
their hands: empty.
–
1993: summer, in New York City
I am four, sitting in a patch of grass
by Pathmark.
an aunt teaches me how to tell
an edible flower
from a poisonous one.
just in case, I hear her say, just in case.
–
1947: a man attacks Jinnah on the street.
another man spits on Nehru.
my family died for your dream
they say.
bring me back my family.
bring me back my family.
–
1947: in Jammu the railway staff hose
blood off the platform.
it has been an unusual rain this year
they say, the bloodwater
spraying onto the grass. the stray dogs lay
about, bloated with flesh.
it has been an unusual rain this year
says a Muslim general, machete in his hand,
his troops surrounding a sleeping Hindu
village, as the sky above Rawalpindi wakes.