Ayesha Was Killed
POETRY FORMAT, 20 Aug 2012
Sumeet Grover – TRANSCEND Media Service
Dedicated to the young men and women executed in Iran for supporting human rights and democracy.
unseasonal mid-year rains pour
a woman takes refuge under a fig
away from her country, away from refuge home
from distance, passing crowds hear of executions and petitions
machinations and protests, dictators and half-cut bodies
she talks intently to a man whose face talks empathy.
bold and unafraid stories to tell
liberated from the day a body found on doorstep
liberated from Ayesha, her daughter;
Ayesha was killed she says
brows move closer, dignity and strength pull them back;
a girl nineteen, she dreamed of Nikah
after maths college comes to end.
it was day she joined crowds
chanting slogans, youthful freedom fuelling voices
like dragons spewing fire;
two in head one in neck
shot to speak to fight their rights, betraying twin mirror.
daughter’s blood ceaselessly splashes in and out
of mother’s heart,
a responsibility she lives in distant land
holding a glossy big album, not of nineteen years,
pictures of sons and daughters of the execution country
six hundred every year, shot locked split hanged;
pictures of others trapped on their own land
in dreams of refuge, to refuge in life.
In a land where freedom
to live to express to celebrate to demand
will be dreamed without death;
where lovers meet in open air
and kiss, cinema of youthful days not purple red nerves,
when mothers hear doorbells
loud children coming home at dusk not screams,
where photographs laughter friends food
reside in memories of young,
will be dream without death;
and in land where religion
would not be used as weapon on its own people.
this is her dream,
she stands with petitions in hand
hoping that sixty or hundred will listen,
draw their names
sign calls of seventy four million people
walking alleys of buried footprints.
_______________________
Sumeet Grover:
– Member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment and of the TRANSCEND Art & Peace Network
– Coordinator of Global Poetry
– A software engineer originally from India, based in the UK.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 20 Aug 2012.
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This is one of the heaviest and saddest poems on human rights, I have ever read. The poem above reminds me of a friend of mine, who was killed during his UN mission for human rights. He had the wife and two small children. I attended his funeral. Many of his friends attended it. Probably, many of Ayesha’s friends attended her funeral as well.