‘The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence’ is an annual international campaign by the United Nations that kicks off on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until 10 December, the Human Rights Day. This year, it is a special commemoration because 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the Global 16 Days Campaign.
Yesterday was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and in order to mark this important occasion, the campaign for which will continue into December, a presentation of the original translation of a recent poem by one of South Asia’s greatest living women Urdu poets, namely Kishwar Naheed, will be apt.
Kishwar Naheed’s poem Noor Mukadam Aur Is Ki Rooh Ka Bayaniya (Noor and Her Spirit’s Narrative) is from her latest nonfiction book, the successor volume to her iconic autobiography Buri Aurat ki Katha (A Bad Woman’s Story), titled Buri Aurat ki Doosri Katha (A Bad Woman’s Second Katha, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2021). It is a masterful testimony of Noor’s brutal murder, given by Noor’s spirit. At the very end of the poem, Noor’s spirit urges the hopeless young boys and girls of our benighted land to make her severed head into a flag and to inform the world. It is in that spirit that this poem has been translated:
I am Noor’s spirit
I was feeling very hurt and insulted
That is why I did not speak before
To defame girls
Or to murder them is no novelty
But how while killing Noor, in installments
His lunacy
Did not reduce in intensity
He would keep telling his friends and parents proudly
And like a football, kept playing with Noor’s head
If I tell the truth
At the time he had dragged Noor, bleeding, to the top of the stairs
At that time, I had very much emerged from her body, becoming a scream
That cruel devil
As many wounds as he could
Put on that spiritless body
I could not bear to watch even that
Noor’s fresh flowing blood
Was giving heat
I was burnt
I turned my face to look
Noor holding her severed head was calling out
Hopeless young boys and girls searching for the way forward!
Demolish the walls of fear within you
Come forward
Remove the blindfold from the eyes of justice
Before some other Noor
Is butchered like me
Make the name of justice respectable
These lowborn officers
Are not letting my nation full of anger come outside
Had I had my way I would blow up their skull
My severed head is placed on my hand
Make it a flag, tell the world.
