The Life That Was

I am a student of Sindh Studies at SZABIST and we went on a trip to visit the Chawkandi Tombs and Banbhore Museum on Sunday, the 16th of September.

I wrote this poem that day and I never had the intention of publishing it until I saw what happened today in Karachi and all around Pakistan. They are burning my country down.

I thought it important to share the beauty that lies in this country of mine, the history that my country is full of, and the emotions that lie behind its existence.

The sea before me, standing on the ruins of a city,

I found myself thinking of how there must have lived a girl just like me,

A girl with friends and family, a home just like mine, full of dreams.

In this very city lie Sassi Punnun, a story of divine love they say. 

I wonder then, what would have been the history had they lived another day.

How would this city look in today’s day and age,

Had Muhammad Bin Qasim not been on his rampage.

The first mosque, a shopping area, an entire people once lived in Banbhore,

They prayed, they shopped, they lived lives that the winds speak of while standing by the shore,

Of a sea as vast as the sky, of a land that was once known,

For being more than just the ruins of a castle or of stories that were born.

Carvings on the stones told stories at Chawkandi,

Of women, of men, of kings and queens, of soldiers and peasants it seemed.

“Big money, big tomb; small money, small tomb; no money, no tomb” the guide shared.

The big money, the small money, the no money, are all buried in the same ground,

There was silence everywhere, silent and sound.

The first Karachiites lay there, my heart raced at the thought of death,

And the Karachi I’d like to see before my very last breath.