Letter from a Soldier

[Swiss_AK]

Letter from a Soldier




I never knew this place could exist

back in the days when I was home and

the sunshine was a never-ending bliss

that warmed your back and kissed your throat, like a lover.

Here, time not measured by hours or minutes, but by

cigarettes, counted out into our waiting, humbled hands

by the guard that has taken a liking born out of pity to us,

three boys much too far away from home.

It's dark here, damp, musty too. I think they've got us

underground

the same level as that

Albanian girl I saw whose body was thrown into a makeshift grave and

her bones are probably three feet left of my ear when I sleep at night

If you can call it sleep.

When I wake up in the morning, my head is still throbbing

with the sound of the guns that shouted all through the night.

I'm dreaming of California palm trees and ocean waves

to soothe my eyes that have been rubbed raw by the sight of

these foreign hills, this barren land,

the naked corpses.

"Join the navy and see the world"

but we've joined the army and seen hell itself

and I won't win any medals for telling you that I'm scared to death.

I never knew that people could turn on each other with the savagery of

crazed dogs

with no regard for age, youth, beauty.

And as I write these words to you, a hundred times over in my mind

because that guard can't give me any pen or paper

and he won't risk his job or his life

to put this in the mail for me

I can see them scatter in the wind, like so many ashes

that fall from my cigarette tip

and fail to ever set the world on fire.


By Bina Shah



Times read: 1270 Published on April 14, 1999


And she boldly asks :What would that soldier, captured by the Serbs, say, if he could write home to his family?

Interesting discussion follows.

From the mother of murdered albanian girl

Your song, a blissful mourn

Of perplexed emotions

Upon your defoliation,

Passed unnoticed through my burning soul.



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http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?a ... r=1&page=1

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One of the great societal conundrums about life in Pakistan is that there is an elite group of people who are living by the mores and values of the Victorian era, surrounded by a huge mass of humanity still trapped in the Stone Ages. How else can you explain tea and sandwiches at the Club, charity balls where strapless and Smirnoff abound, luxury vacations and foreign passport holders, living side-by-side with honor killings, child labor of Dickensian proportions, mothers dying in childbirth, and men and women who are unable to read or write their own names?

“Twenty-First Century Woman” explores the issues and conflicts stirred up by this dual existence. Women’s issues, the media, current events, and society at large will make it into the mix in an attempt to make sense of, or at least observe and record, Pakistan in the twenty first century through a woman’s perspective. This woman, of course, makes no attempt to speak for every woman, or indeed every Pakistani, but offers up her views in tribute to and tribulation of the most complex country on earth.

Bina Shah
October 17, 2002


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56. Rape and Exploitation - Pakistan`s Dilemma on September 18, 2005


http://www.chowk.com/show_columnist_pag ... ina%20Shah