Osama

		- What's the rainbow? - he asked.
		- It was a souvenir from Rustam,
		  the big hero, to free us from
		  pain and misery.
                      - Osama (the movie)

Bitterness alight on us
on a searing dawn,
exaggeratedly, gloatingly
when the message
of my father's death
was brought, by bearded men.
Sorrow teared my body to shreds
and beguiled my hunger.
Me, my mother, my grandmother,
the three of us
girls, wives, women,
reclining in the middle
of our dusty land
right on the surface
of desolation,
we all got lost in the haze,
drifting toward a future uncertain.
Later I was sold,
as reward to my forgiveness
as a wife, as a slave,
as a concubine,
after the failure of their plan
to turn me into a boy
instead of the little girl I was,
changed, as I cross the rainbow
I will never see again.
I still hear the soothing voice
of my grandmother
echoing further in my ears,
chaperoned by desire,
my wish to return there,
where the rainbow
turned the girl into a boy,
and the boy into a girl.

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