Umme Rabaab

 By: Sister Fiddha

I see a girl
Maybe one?
I don't know
I have never been a mother?
I am too young-
Too guess ages.
She's beautiful though
Chubby fingers
Fat rounded cheeks
A laughing toothless grin
And sparkling eyes.
Was Sakina like that?
The girl bounces on her
Mother's lap.
What happened to yours?
When Sakina and Asghar
Were slaughtered like
Sheep.
Did you imagine a bouncing
Laughing girl to stem
The madness
The grief.
Oceans of blood
Waits to burst
Through your body
Exploding the seams
Of your skin
Breaking the feeble stitches
Which hold you together.
What part of you lived.
I wonder.
With your husband, daughter and
Baby
Dead.


Lifeless corpses
Thats what the Ummah gifted you with
Thats the prize for loving Allah
Did you turn on your bed
Your hand stretching out
To feel for Hussain's cheek
Did you forget its place
On Shimr's spear?
Did you manage to collect
Asghar's severed head
In the folds of your dress
As you were released.
His smiling lips
Frozen.
An everlasting image of
War.
A symbol of Kerbala
How did you bury his body?
Head separately?
Then his headless body?
His short stumpy legs?
And Sakina
What expression did she die with
A thirsty one?
A pained scream?
An agony
Which killed her seeping her life blood
Drop by drop
Until one day it ran out.


A shell suit
You walked, talked, sleeped
A living miracle!
But did you breathe?
Or were your expressions
Signs of suffocation
By Hurmala's
Hands.