My body will not be affected
By decisions of men in legislatures
I do not spill crimson every month.
My body will not be affected
By men carrying knives and ligatures
I cannot be raped.
My body will not be affected
By men who decide women need not study
I already have a college degree.
My body will not be affected
By men who declare I can’t work
My husband pays all the bills.
So they relaxed their bodies
In willful blindness.
They laughed at sisters
Who marched on the streets.
They joined the men in calling them whores.
And said their sons were worth more.
Then came laws that forced darkness
Faces forced behind cloaks of bleakness.
The marchers were murdered
The voices silenced.
Dance outlawed, music banned.
Writers fled, poets quietened.
Memories of the Taliban
Became realities again.
In lands that had assumed
Never again.
Quatrina Hosain, excerpt from ‘The Color of Our Rights’, from Darker Objects
Quatrina Hosain is a Pakistani journalist who writes verse when she is enraged and then deletes it all. This is her first foray into sharing her dark thoughts. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1987 and immediately went into mainstream journalism on her return to Pakistan. She has worked for several news organizations, including Agence France Presse. She covered the war in Sri Lanka and unrest in Bangladesh in the 1990s, becoming Pakistan’s first woman war correspondent. She has been the editor of a national newspaper and anchored television news programs for several years. She has interviewed several heads of state from around the world. During an unplanned hiatus from journalism, she returned to her first love of rescuing animals and running an animal shelter. She also remains deeply involved in improving legislation for animal rights. For the past 15 years, she has focused on tracking terrorist and extremist ideologies and worked on reclaiming space conceded over the years. She trains police officers, anti-terrorist court prosecutors and government officials in strategic communications pertaining to terrorism and violent extremism. She also develops and deploys counter violent extremism campaigns. Much of her personal writing is drawn from the hatred and hostility towards women promoted by extremist organizations. She currently lives with her 15 rescue cats and two dogs and divides her time between Karachi and Islamabad. Someday, she hopes to finish writing her book on the Mughul queen, Empress Nurjehan.
Indie Blu(e) Publishing 