I was incomplete, <br />Oh dears! You completed me, <br />Just for a word, <br />I agreed to be born, <br />As a woman! <br />Otherwise, <br />I would have prayed, <br />Kindly not to make, <br />Me a woman! <br />Your world, <br />Will not let the woman live, <br />You yourself would be watching, <br />In your world, <br />A woman, <br />Is a commodity of pleasure, <br />Sometimes she is stolen, <br />Sometimes robbed, <br />Not only in the markets, <br />Sold even at home! <br />I saw her trembling, <br />I saw her falling, <br />I saw her standing, <br />Again after falling, <br />I saw her burnt alive, <br />I saw her melting in acid, <br />I saw her stoned to death, <br />Publicly! <br />I saw her bricked, <br />Alive in a wall, <br />Even today blood, <br />Is bursting out of the earth, <br />From a place, <br />She was buried alive, <br />Guilty of being a woman, <br />Today before her birth, <br />The killers, <br />Force her to sleep, <br />In the valley of death, <br />What could I do? <br />I had to be completed, <br />Just to listen, <br />To this word, <br />I was born, <br />My children! <br />You call me Mom! <br /> <br />(In a western society one may not believe but all this happened and still happening in our society)<br /><br />Akhtar Jawad<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-word-a-relationship-translation-of-khalida-bano-ali-s-poem-ek-lafz-ek-rishta/
