Midnight, Dhaka E-Book

Mahfuz Ali Mir

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 38

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Mir Mahfuz Ali is an exceptional new voice in British Poetry. A native of what is now Bangladesh, Mahfuz grew up during the difficult period of the early 1970's when the region was struck, first by a devastating cyclone, then by a particularly vicious civil war. As a boy, Mahfuz witnessed atrocities and writes about them with a searing directness in poems like 'My Salma' and the title poem. But much more than this, his trauma becomes transformative, and his poetry the key to unlocking memories of a childhood that are rich in nuance, gorgeous in detail and evocative of a beautiful country. They celebrate the human capacity for love, survival and renewal.

Leseprobe

Mir Mafhuz Ali

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend,Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

twitter@SerenBooks

The right of Mir Mahfuz Ali to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Mir Mahfuz Ali 2014

ISBN: 978-1-78172-159-9

e-book: 978-1-78172-160-5

Kindle: 978-1-78172-161-2

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Book Cover Design: Khandaker Enamul Haque

Artist: Aniruddha Kar

Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Author website: www.mirmahfuzali.com

Contents

Midnight, Dhaka, 25 March 1971

My Salma

Hurricane

Our Boowah

Nandita

Cord

Jonaki

My First Shock at School

A Bengali Girl in a Shy Village

Billkiss

Baby Snatchers’ Hill

Early Morning, Polished Boots

The Nectarine Tree

Flies

My Mistress Grounded Me

MIG-21 Raids at Shegontola

Illegitimate

An Open Manhole

Bangladesh

Boy in an Old Photograph

Skylark

A Basket of Sorrow

Bidisha on the Wall

Mind of a Stone

A Lizard by My Hospital Bed

Bullet

My Maestro

Dog Seed

When Bangladesh Floats in a Water-hyacinth

My Aim Now is to Waste Time Luxuriously

Suzanne

Why Doesn’t My Sister Sing to Me Anymore?

To Have My Sister Back

She May be in the Summer Berries

Famine

My Father, a Disconnected Man

Still Birth

Mother to Son

My Child, Cycling

I Want to Change the Course of a Great River

An English Viper and Indian Cobra

My Son Waits by the Door

The Last Apple in a Bowl of Fruit

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Midnight, Dhaka, 25 March 1971

I am a hardened camera clicking at midnight.

I have caught it all – the screeching tanks

pounding the city under the massy heat,

searchlights dicing the streets like bayonets.

Kalashnikovs mowing down rickshaw pullers,

vendor sellers, beggars on the pavements.

I click on, despite the dry and bitter dust

scratched on the lake-black water of my Nikon eye,

at a Bedford truck waiting by the roadside,

at two soldiers holding the dead by their hands and legs,

throwing them into the back, hurling

them one upon another until the floor

is loaded to the sky’s armpits. The corpses stare

at our star’s succulent whiteness

with their arms flung out as if to bridge a nation.

Their bodies shake when the lorry chugs.

I click as the soldiers laugh at the billboard on the bulkhead:

GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU

SIX MILLION DRUNK EVERY DAY.

My Salma

Forgive me badho, my camellia bush,

when you are full of yourself and blooming,

you may ask why, having spent so many years

comfortably in your breasts, I still dream of Salma’s,

just as I did when I was a hungry boy in shorts,

her perfect fullness amongst chestnut leaves.

The long grass broke as I ran, leaving

its pollen on my bare legs.

When the soldiers came, even the wind

at my heels began to worship Salma’s beauty.

*

A soldier kicked me in the ribs. I fell

to the ground wailing.

They brought Salma into the yard,

asked me to watch how they would explode

a bullet into her. But I turned my head away

as they ripped her begooni blouse,

exposing her startled flesh. The young soldier

held my head, twisting it back towards her,

urging me to spit at a woman

as I might spit a melon seed into the olive dirt.

*

The soldier decorated with two silver bars

and two half-inch stripes was the first to drop his

ironed khaki trousers and dive on top of Salma.

His back arched as she fought for the last leaf

of her dignity. He laughed as he pumped

his rifle-blue buttocks in the Hemonti sun.

Then covered in Bengal’s soft soil, he offered

her to the next soldier in line.

They all had their share of her,

dragged her away out of the yard.

I went in search of Salma,

among the firewood in the jungle.

*

I stood in the middle of a boot-bruised field,

working out how the wind might lead me to her.

Then I saw against the deepening sky

a thin mangey bitch, tearing at a body with no head,

breasts cut off in a fine lament.

I knew then who she was, and kicked

the bitch in the ribs, the same way

that I had been booted in the chest.