Father in Gaza Your home to which you return is now a tower block of blown-out eye sockets, nightmarish, stooping over the vast field of concrete, bleeding the voices of children who once held these hands. Hands now clearing rubble, brick, bone, teeth and toys. Dolls with missing limbs, and bullet –holed belly buttons, their faces grey with grime, dust, ash and blood. A father rescues a doll’s face to reveal a plastic smile mimicking his own. (published by Writers Without Borders, 2015) Back Yard Every summer on a Saturday morning you bathed us in the back yard of our tiny terraced house. We had pink Lux, a bucket, a sponge and a jug. The sun would dry the suds on our skin that would stick like glue and make us white. Bubbles were bigger than our house. You rinsed us and then we were brown again. We sat towel wrapped in the sun and shivered while droplets fell onto our flip flops. Smiles were bigger than our house. (published by Writers Without Borders, 2015) After the Explosion Severed limbs, still marked with honeymoon kisses, re-attach with rough seams. She gives herself a new blood supply. Like a corpse revived or a post-stroke patient or a traumatised soldier she learns to speak and walk again. (published by Writers Without Borders, 2015) Rooftops The balcony is dotted with green spit stains; the gush of monsoons will wash these away. Women lean over, resting their bosoms, loosely wrapped with yellow and milkshake pinks, careless strings on their backs, ruffled hair smelling of stale aftershave. Mouths like peaches, red from chewing paan blow ringlets of smoke into the smoggy sky. Cigarettes: their reward from trouser pockets checked by doubting hands of wives every night. Some spit sipari like loveless thrusts of hungry men. Hennaed feet tap to Asha Bhosle; hips bruised by foreign fingers sway for more to feed the babies, now asleep, next door. The Azaan calls men to prayer while some enter through creaking doors. (Published in The Bolton Review, issue 2, January 2015) The Throne He hits me hard on the palm of my hand with the stick, for not saying ‘Salaam, Molvi Sahab’. I sit in pain, blinking back my tears so no one laughs. They’re all looking: I open the Qur’an and recite. He disappears after Saima leaves. Zenab says that he takes out his brown slug which slowly grows, his beard twitches and his eyes roll up as he breathes fast, half-naked in the Wazu area. We’re chanting words of ‘The Throne’ His throne remains empty for a long time but like God, he’s still here. We’re reciting verses that instruct distance between man and woman; man and girl. (published in In Protest: 150 poems for human rights, by The University of London & Human Rights Commission, 2013) A Book Closer to Home. Every Saturday mum took us to the library. We dispersed into different parts of the room, craving this yellow smell of bound paper and a peep into lives we did not live - where tea was not chai, but dinner. Mum sat in the Urdu section, soon dissolving into a magazine full of squiggles that only made sense to her. Her large almond eyes smiled. Her soft fingers turned the pages, pausing while she glanced at us with motherly duty. We sat with our books on the carpeted floor, following the curves and lines of English with our fingertips, the red signs on the mahogany shelves silencing our tongues. (published by Bloodaxe, Out of Bounds, 2012) Visiting Time An amoeba-shaped stain on the bleached sheet beneath your swollen thighs increases in size. The curtains enclose you; the midwife whose hands you know so well helps to latch your new-born to your burning breast. With each suck, your womb contracts. You cry; she thinks you’re in pain passing you a pain-killer on a surgical silver tray. You do not hear your child, only the cooing voices of fathers, in Ward 5. (published in Poetry Review, volume 102:4 winter 2012) To Lahore It was December. I was eleven, sitting in a cold train. Two windows to my left were missing. I was thirsty and all I could have was water or chai. Chai lo chai lo chai! A dirty cup with frothy milky tea was handed to me from the platform, by a young frail boy, which my mother pushed away. I wanted it so that he could have the money. When she looked away I passed him a Rupee which my naani gave me. He smiled and kissed it. At the next station, a small, brown bony hand touched my arm that worked with a begging voice – a sweet voice like my baby sister’s. The other hand was missing. I was scared. I woke my mum but my eyes met the begger’s first - empty and sad but firm. Bibi ! pese do pese do pesa! My mum covered my eyes. I pushed her hands away to see the train full of begging amputees - an arm, a leg, a hand missing. money flying into their laps. In the distance I heard Chai lo chai lo chai! I did not have a Rupee left. (published by Stand Magazine, March 2012) Starching She empties the rice into a colander, collects the water in a bowl, lets it cool. The wash area is a tap, a hosepipe, a bowl and a drain. We sit on stools made of weaved nylon. She soaks the cotton shalwar kameez in the milky bowl swirling it with her brown hands, then squeezing it; I see her discoloured and brittle fingernails. The clothes look sticky; the starch looks like wallpaper paste pooling onto the blue mosaic tiles beneath us. She then rinses the garments three times under the tap. We hang them up to dry in February’s breeze and then sit inside so that I can smooth her hands with whatever I can find: a forgotten bottle of Nivea cream. (published by Stand magazine, March 2012) Muli ki Roti ~ Roti of radish ~