ہم بارانی لوگ ہیں

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1. What will they do to us?

   We are from the arid areas
   They don’t know
   we nev­er leave our fields, sea­sons and the grave­yards
   Like the shrub­beries
   we keep on grow­ing yields after yields
   They sprin­kle the newest chem­i­cals
   to exter­mi­nate us, but
   to no avail
   The pes­ti­cides
   can­not do us any harm
   Wher­ev­er we go
   we take along our soil, our foliage

   We are from the arid areas
   They don’t know,
   we may be liv­ing in the cities
   but our cli­mate is enriched with
   the aro­ma of aca­cia flow­ers
   and over our heads
   there remains the shade of rose­wood tree, always
   We are not afraid of the scorch­ing sun­light
   and the tor­ren­tial rains
   We are nev­er alone or a few
   the entire vil­lage stands behind us
   They’ll nev­er get to know the rea­son
   behind our tall door­ways, open court­yards, long foy­ers
   big hearts and hard­ened bod­ies
   We are the trails
   los­ing our trails into the set­tle­ments
   and we are the com­mon land by the vil­lages
   their com­put­ers can­not iden­ti­fy us
   We are like the trees, mead­ows and
   July clouds
   and to get to our pug­marks
   they’ll have to car­ry out a cen­sus
   on the entire Earth and the sky

   We are from the arid areas
   we do know for sure
   they’ll kill us in the papers
   they’ll drag us into the FIRs and the order-sheets
   and they’ll tax even our slight­est and unno­tice­able
   move­ments and ges­tures
   They’ll file us one day after
   our numer­ous vis­its to the offices,
   police sta­tions and the dis­trict-courts
   But they don’t know
   we are from the arid areas
   grow­ing and flour­ish­ing is in our nature
   We’ll get out of their dai­ly-diaries and
   spread into every house, every alley and every town
   We’ll grow like the graves
   out of land-filled plots
   lev­eled for the sky­scrap­ers!!

   Poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
   Eng­lish trans­la­tion by Kam­ran Awan