Dead long

Stiff and cold fingers mourn
The keratin rupture
For a loot of half-moons

On the husband’s charpai frame

Crescent marks & lunulae
Sit sanguine, the proud
Spoils of his night’s labor

And an empty glass of
Turmeric milk stands on
A chinioti night-stand

My dowry’s rosewood organ––

The vestal white lamb
Hitched to a charpai leg
Bleated and kicked all night

But I’d need four witnesses
By Zia’s ordinance
My word as good as the lamb’s.

The midwife says it’s a baby
Heavy as my husband’s coins

Sunk into my heir granting
Wishing well womb

Like the one in the backyard
Its waters contaminated

By his sixteen-year-old wife’s
Blithely floating corpse

Whence the water deity
Fortnightly hymns to his mardangi

Hers, an accident.

Rub raw my insides with
Wash cloth & pumice stone

The crawling sensations inch
From womb to rib & bone

It is not parasitosis
If you call it yours, call it child

My body a live host with the perfect pedigree
Fair-skinned and compliant

“جی جی، ہاں بلکل! جیسا آپ کہیں”
“Yes yes, of course! whatever you say”

With a lineage of inbred ancestors
Trained to uphold the patriarch’s honor

Which lies in my torn Daman
In every fold of my shalwar

Bred and fed for this day
An incubator, nameless female cavity

The in-laws tolerate my whims
As the commands of their future heir

Autarch homunculus

“Give her two rotis
She eats for one and a half”

The neighborhood women
Smelling of ginger and condiments

They bring prayer books in Arabic
Potions made of holy basil

Chants to recite after fajr
& a black Ta’wiz round my neck

Let it be a boy
Let it be a man
A shadow of His father
The cause of His pride

Nobody talks of it.

 

I am once more laden
Heavier than the last

Eating more dates
A few inches broader

“Talk only to mothers of sons
Ask them how they managed the feat”

Of willing a Y chromosome
An ithyphallic child into existence.

It’s monsoon season
And the well fills with rain

Keechar sticks to the underbellies
Of skittering olive-green frogs

Crickets stridulate for a mate
And the women in the well linger

They live on
In the melanistic fawn
In the pale sawan flowers

Their invasive roots
And all, who drink from the well

Where I might end up too
Rot in rot, ribs interlocked

Quenching the thirst of a fawn
Nourishing blooms that die too soon

Their diluted voices beckon

To the well!

My child,
Dead long.

––

• Charpai: a traditional woven bed used in South Asia. In Pakistani and Indian culture there’s a tradition of serving turmeric milk to the groom and sometimes to the bride too on their wedding night, it’s considered an aphrodisiac that increases strength and improves performance in bed.
• Chinioti: from the chiniot city in Pakistan, popular for its wood furniture
• Zia’s ordinance: reference to a set of laws called “Hudood Ordinances” enacted in Pakistan by military dictator Zia-Ul-Haq, it was used to charge women for adultery when they were raped and failed to provide four male eye witnesses of rape as a woman’s witness was considered half that of a male.
• Mardangi: Urdu word for manhood/masculinity
• Daman: hem of shirt
• Shalwar: traditional Punjabi pants
• Roti: south asian flatbread
• Fair: the dawn prayer in Islam
• Ta’wiz: amulet for blessing/protection
• Keechar: mud
• Sawan: fifth month in the Punjabi/Sikh nanakshahi calendar