Admonish
‘drain your blood, drip by drip, we need it, the boss, the Saigols, Manshas, the Sharifs, Zardaris are in need, drip by drip drain it, seth needs a new jeep and the daughter has to go to school in New York and some of this blood has to go the bank’
1
Outside banks sit guards, guarding the drained blood of the poor.
2
At shrines circle vultures with threads and ringlets, donning clothes of fakirs they lend money
3
In Mozang, Abdul and Shiraz sit on beds across the assembly line…boiling them is Basit.
He says, ‘drain your blood, drip by drip, we need it, the boss, the Saigols, Manshas, the Sharifs, Zardaris are in need, drip by drip drain it, seth needs a new jeep and the daughter has to go to school in New York and some of this blood has to go the bank’.
4
Shireen, (unmarried and forty) and her mother (widowed and sixty) and her sister in law (married and forty five) are kind. Each day Abdul (her brother) comes and asks for a limb from each and each day and night they give him a limb of theirs. Each day with a knife he comes with a smile and an iron and clothes to be washed and eyes to be feared and eyes to be entertained and a body thirsty with lust for each day his body too has drained blood…
5
Why then Qalandar admonish yourself…at every gate there is a guard – you can’t be a servant.
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Qalandar Bux Memon is editor of Naked Punch, a UK-based politics, culture and arts journal. |