Shabana Bawar
I sat by the window watching the sky
Then I heard the sound of gunshots.
I loathe the angry “boom, boom” of bombs
The guns locking near and far.
The Earth is red in the evening.
Fearing death
Everyone bends their shoulders and walks fast.
With tears in their eyes
A boy is after his father, a father searches for his son.
A child longs for her father to knock on the door.
She can’t accept death without questioning it.
She runs. She runs looking for her father.
The screams of mothers,
The cries of sisters
Are the bells that awaken us.
I am the song of hundreds of youth
Who fell before they could rise.
We didn’t listen to their words.
Their pens are now still.
The books of their lives will never open again.
Death is faster here than it is everywhere else.
Even death loses its meaning.
What is terrorism, they ask.
Can words describe
The greatest monster of our time?
—
Read this piece in Persian here.