Eid in the Paradise of Blood

Zeeba T. Hashmi
 
 
[On 27th Ramzan (7th August, 2013), one Colonel belonging from Peshawar, one from Lahore and another SSP from Swat, were killed in gruesome targeted firing by a militant upon their return from a security meeting late at night. This poem is inspired by the widow of the brave soldier who got martyred in this firing.  Her shrieks still can’t escape my ears.]
 
In the valleys of green, terrestrial wonders of this paradise
where life was meant to be cherished,
filled with every pearl of joy
where sorrow was supposed to be untouched.
 
But a brute mortality brought an end to it all.
 
By dangerous demons known to the world,
protected for the value they bring
to their Guardian Monsters.
 
There in a house in this red paradise,
haunted by the shrieks of a  mother of three.
 
She said she had her man,
a handsome man,
who built  heaven for her.
She looked up to him, as he embraced her with guarantee
 
–In his uniform like a photograph decorated on her mantelpiece-
 
Said that he will return to her,
as he kissed his little ones good-bye
in their sleep, in the warmth of all his love.
 
Eid is coming, he thought, I will bring them gifts.
 
But knowing not what future might hold,
in this shaky world he dreamed to turn into paradise.
 
The glow in his brave spirit, said the wailing mother of three
was left behind in permanence as he departed.
 
A particle of his soul as a building block
of heaven he wanted for his motherland.
 
He never returned as his devotion called for
sacrifice to barbarity of the demons she knew nothing about,
Except that they killed the man she loved
Who never made it home to her children
this Eid with his promised gifts.