Attiya & Abro

The rains, the roads, the warning messages running on the strips that now take up more space than the video on TV screens, all made it difficult for many people to reach T2F for the event. Several phoned to ask for postponement, but there were enough in the audience and it would have been ridiculous to send back those who came despite the conditions. So we struck a deal with Attiya Dawood, who promised us another session very soon. Within the next 3-4 weeks, in fact. (Which is how long Abro's excellent canvases that complement Attiya;s poems, will also be on exhibit. (More about him in my next post as soon as I return from the SOL/YLC in Lahore).

A session with Attiya is always a treat. For first-timers, it holds a bundle of surprises. An outspoken and very powerful feminist poet, in Sindhi and Urdu, she is also a great raconteur and, unlike her passionate, fiercely sad poems, her retelling of her life is full of wit and an honest humour that is hard to capture in a report to those not present ... although the rebelliousness comes through in everthing she writes, says and does. Suffice to say, if you missed this time, do make it the next.

The multifaceted Asif Farrukhi, writer of stories and poems in English and Urdu, has translated Attiya's Book, now sadly out of print --- (Good News: OUP will soon be releasing her autobiography. How soon? "As soon as it is released from Abro's clutches, " says Attiya.) --- Her recitations were occasionally followed by Asif reading from his wonderful translations.

Her personal favourite among her own poems is "To My Daughter" - which she recited in Urdu and Sindhi (at the request of Babar Ayaz). It is reproduced here, with Abro's painting that accompanied it in in the original publication. Click on the image to make it more readable. And here's Asif reading his own translation of the poem.}


Attiya's blood-curdling poem on the rape of a 2-year old child - "Baykaar Khilaunay" - is offered here in translation:

DISCARDED TOYS

Today in my courtyard
The setting sun is a spear’s distance away.
The earth, like my heart, is brandished metal.
Snatching the soother from my baby daughter’s lips,
Some monster has poured all the world’s horror into her life.

I had never waged battles against anybody:
Then why was the Karbala re-enacted for me?

The court is in session and the judge is
Listening to everybody’s statement.
A beast stands in the place marked for the accused,
I have cut my breasts and fed them to this beast.
All of you good souls who offer me sympathy,
Give me but a handful of words
So that my lips may utter a lullaby
To make this suckling infant wounded by the arrow of lust
Smile in her sleep once again.

When I kiss her as she lays asleep
She wakes up screaming.
What Hell has been unleashed on this innocent one
That even on her father’s chest,
In her mother’s arms,
She writhes like a chicken with its neck sliced?

Can the counterfeit coin of this country’s law
Ever buy for me a toy
Which I can use to appease
My little daughter
As she sleeps on the red-hot coals of pain?

O God of mine ...
When I will come to face you,
Holding my daughter’s discarded toys
And blood soaked underthings,
Tell me,
To balance the Scales of Justice
What will YOU put on the other side?

Is there anyone who is not struck numb by the power of her words?

Had it not been for the conversation that followed the readings, with Abro joining in and being his strong silent self except for a sentence or two that required industrial-strength coaxing (his view: "I speak only through my work."), we'd have gone back shaken to the core. Attiya's arrows hit home, everytime!

All of Attiya's writings, in Sindhi and Urdu, with English translations, are now on the Web.