Bangladesh
Genocide in the Eye of a Pakistani Poet
Sajed
Kamal
Courtesy: http://www.southasiatimes.com/2001/May2001/arts_lituratures/default.htm
On
March 26, 1971, the Pakistani government—ruled by the West
Pakistanis—launched a planned genocide on the East Pakistanis—mostly
Bengalees. The purpose of the
genocide was to suppress East Pakistan’s demand for political autonomy,
which would become unavoidable should the government have followed a
democratic path of settlement. During
the next nine months three million people were massacred—the largest number
of people killed in the shortest span of time in human history.
People from all walks of life were summarily executed—students,
teachers, professors, doctors, nurses, scientists, politicians, poets,
artists, writers, government workers, military and paramilitary personnel,
industrialists, shop keepers, rickshaw pullers.
Innocent and unarmed villagers—men, women and children—were rounded
up, raped, mutilated and massacred by the West Pakistani troops.
Out of this genocide the Liberation War of 1971 began and on December
16 the Pakistani occupation army surrendered before the joint command of the
Mukti Bahini (Freedom Fighters) and Indian Army. An independent and sovereign
Bangladesh was born.
Poets
are called the “conscience of the people.”
What about the poets in Pakistan? Then and now?
With time we have come to know about some great poets of Pakistan who
weren’t silent against the inhumanity and brutality committed in their name.
Among such poets are Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Habib Jalib, Ahmad Salimm, Sheikh Ayaz
and Ajmal Kahattak. Hats off to all of them. Courageously, they spoke.
Here
are two poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984), considered one of the foremost
poets of the Indian subcontinent. He
wrote in Urdu, but his poems have been translated into several languages. The
death of this great poet of social conscience was mourned throughout the
world.
Stay
Away from Me (Bangladesh I)
How
can I embellish this carnival of slaughter,
how
decorate this massacre?
Whose
attention could my lamenting blood attract?
There’s almost no blood in my rawboned body
and what’s left
isn’t enough to burn as oil in the lamp,
not enough to fill a wineglass.
It can feed no fire,
extinguish no thirst.
There’s a poverty of blood in my ravaged body—
a terrible poison now runs in it.
If you pierce my veins, each drop will foam
as venom
at the cobra’s fangs.
Each
drop is the anguished longing of ages’
the burning seal of a rage hushed up for years.
Beware of me. My body is a river
of poison.
Stay away from me. My body is a
parched log in the desert.
If you burn it, you won’t see the cypress or the jasmine,
but my bones blossoming like thorns in the cactus.
If you throw it in the forests,
instead of morning perfumes, you’ll scatter
the dust of my seared soul.
So stay away from me. Because
I’m thirsting for blood.
Bangladesh
II
This
is how my sorrow became visible:
its dust, piling up for years in my heart,
finally reached my eyes,
the
bitterness now so clear that
I had to listen when my friends
told me to wash my eyes with blood.
Everything
at once was tangled in blood—
each face, each idol, red everywhere.
Blood swept over the sun, washing away its gold.
The
moon erupted with blood, its silver extinguished.
The sky promised a morning of blood,
and the night wept only blood.
The
trees hardened into crimson pillars.
All flowers filled their eyes with blood.
And every glance was an arrow,
each
pierced image blood. This blood
--a river crying out for martyrs—
flows on its longing. And in sorrow, in rage, in love.
Let
it flow. Should it be dammed up,
there will only be hatred cloaked in colors of death.
Don’t let this happen, my friends,
bring
all my tears back instead,
a flood to fill my dust-filled eyes,
to wash this blood forever from my eyes.
Editor’s
Note: Both the poems are from “The Rebel’s Silhouette,” a collection of
poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated by Agha Shahid Ali (Layton, Utah:
Gibbs-Smith, Publisher, 1991. Translation copyright 1991 by Agha Shahid Ali