Ghar/Home
By Gayatri Aich
If home is found on both sides of the globe,
home is of course here – and always a missed land.
Agha Shahid Ali, “Land”
an old woman sits on the wooden log that creates a boundary around her home that has shattered glass windows and broken walls
she sits there from six in the morning and until the sun sets in the valley waiting for her son to return from a land with no name
a land that has a crowd of machines and humans
and the roaring noise of the oppressor in all its tiny corners
it has been a year and a half since she last heard his voice through the telephone wires that now lay broken on the table at a corner of her home
she waits in hope of hearing the laughter of her son
and his cries while he puts his head on her lap and she strokes his hair with her delicate touch
Umar, her son, will never return
he was killed with a knife in his heart
somewhere
in the west of this country
a little boy holds the little finger of his dadaji
as they take a walk in the streets at six in the evening
the sound of the aarti by the river reminds him of the namaaz from the blurred images in his unstable memory
they live far from what used to be home now
he thinks of the bangles that his baba had bought for his ammi
a night before she was murdered in the streets
Umar, the little boy of three and a half, doesn’t remember her face
all he remembers is the shade of red around her wrists
and the shade of red on her neck
By Gayatri Aich
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