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.Also read: The Poetess of ‘No’: 50 Years of Kishwar Naheed’s ‘Lab-e-Goya’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 earthThe ones hidden in the moundsAre girls without a mark or trace.Every evening Bhittai the master comes hereComes and sits after squanderingThe pearls of tears on all of themAnd the fragrance of his consolationsSprings from the depths of the earthen desolations. He says, you my daughtersWill not be without name or traceThis will rather be the fate of thoseWho have surrendered you without a bath or a shroudTo the earth’s reposeHe says the culprits of loveHave indeed always sufferedBut like my poetryThey too have always attained immortality.You are that song of my artWhich 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 crimeJust this to put henna on my hands sometimeThen sometimes on my own while aloneMoving my bangles and legsGathering the blooming budsOf my dreams and joysAnd laughingMy father and brotherSaw, moved forwardAnd seized my throatThose who saw had toldThat the marks of the veins of my neckHad been imprinted on their fingers.Baba, the one who you had nursedWatching her wither like a red leafProstrating in gratitudeYou never even sweatedYou never even buried meThey were some strangers definitelyWho brought me to the Kari cemetery.Now when the evening arrivesFrom the grave every uncomfortable dream thrivesIn the whole cemetery the lamps of desiresLight so many firesThose who were released from lifeWith their Saanval in the name of honourThey had been buried as they were within the earth.Those who saw have told that every eveningA pair of pigeons arrives at their grave for mourning.All the stars in the skyAre watched by angels from up highIn the lanes, quarters and bazaarsThe people wearing higher turbansIn the form of intoxicated slogansSpeak in unisonUpon a girl being made Kari“Thanks God! Our honour is still virgin.”Oh my God!Do you also consider my complaintsTo be my sinsMy mothers had covered me with many a curtainYou had given me the power to raise my penUpon all patriarchal, so-called menNow to those who behead, do teach a lesson Open the bundle of the day whenThe wish of my Punoon, my Ranjha, my Umar be fulfilledGrant me again the twitter of parrotsGive me, not a black shroudBut 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. He has previously written on, and translated the selected work of Kishwar Naheed and Zehra Nigah. His most recent work is a contribution to the edited volume Salt in Wounds: Poems of Kishwar Naheed (Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2020). He can be reached at razanaeem@hotmail.com.
