KOCHI: In Afghanistan, during the first Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001 where the lives of every citizen, especially women, were brutal than hell, some found ways to fight back. Keeping the rich art and literature scene of the country alive albeit underground. In Load Poema Like Guns: Women’s Poetry from Herat, Afghanistan, poet Farzana Marie, translates poems by women writers of Afghanistan. Poems about the hell they witnessed during the five years under the Taliban.
These eight poems come straight from the heart of the writers and their unending courage in a society where women were restricted from reading and writing. Some had to pay with their lives for their act of rebellion. The book opens with poems of Nadia Anjuman, one of the most influential woman poets from the country. She was born in Herat, the historical city bordering Iran.
There is a common saying that Khaled Hosseini mentions in A Thousand Splendid Suns and in the forward by Farzana — “you cannot stretch your leg in Herat without poking a poet in the ass”. The city was the first to fall to the Taliban in 1995. However, the extremist Taliban government couldn’t destroy the will of the people and the once flourishing literature society went underground.
It’s in one of these underground societies, Nadia started penning her many heartbreaking and dark poems. When the Taliban government fell, she was the first woman to join Herat University. Her first poetry collection Smoke Bloom was published in 2005 to much critical acclaim. In 2004 she was forced to marry a fellow student, says explains Farzana in the collection. However, due to her rising fame, she was murdered by her husband in 2005 just a year after their marriage. He had to serve only a couple of months in prison as punishment.
“No one anywhere notices or cares whether
I cry, whether I laugh, whether I die or am still here.”
Goes the first poem Makes No Sense or famously known as an Afghan woman by Nadia. The ghazal-like poem is a testament to a generation’s grief in a war-torn country.
Marie says in the forward that the many sufferings of Afghan people, famine, war, deaths, grief have “strengthened the community’s resolve to hold tightly to their heritage of words that cannot be destroyed with tanks or rockets”. All the poems are tinged with darkness and extreme grief with hope peeking out in some parts. However, the titular poem by Somaya Ramesh is strong and the rebellion flows from each word inspiring people to take up pens and shout out through the aid of inks.
EXCERPT
“Load poems like guns-each moment is loaded with bombs bullets blasts death-sounds -death and war don’t follow the rules you can make your pages into while flags a thousand times but swallow your words, say no more. “
- By Somaya Ramesh