When Adam was still to receive his form
Then my relationship began
When I heard the Lord's voice
A voice sweet and clear
I said "yes" with all my heart
And formed a bond with the land I love
When all of us were one
My bond then began
An exile now by destiny
I am nearer home than my heart's beat
I wonder: when will I be free
To return to Larkana
From dust to dust
Loved ones return
To what they were
When will I walk home from Arab lands
To my own sweet Motherland.
Waiting for news in dreams and day
Waiting for messengers in dreams and day
When will the message come
Taking me from here to there
I want the answer to my heart
I want to pass God's test
O God, I await the messenger
Taking me to where I belong
Although the tyrants do not care
Strands of white my hair now shows
My face is gaunt with sadness
I to my people want to go
I came in the winter of repression
I pray to return in different times
Like the joy of a seasonal rain
The peoples support I will reclaim.
Almighty God,
Let Mother’s sickness not worsen in exile
Trapped in a mind wanting to forget
A heart weeping for young sons killed
O let Mother first her homeland see
O where is my husband gone?
His life's prime and his grace?
Prison Walls confine him
Court rooms frustrate him
Judges are frightened
Courage has fled
Salaries are more important
Than honour for which men gave lives
Pakistan, my health is worn
My joy is gone
And yet my heart is strong
For the fight
For our people lost rights
Each day I smile for the world,
For my children and my self
They ask: when can we return?
I speak of justice fled
From hearts of men
Into the breasts of beasts
I tell them
We will smile and we will eat
When freedom from chains is freed
I think of the poor people
A better fate they deserve
Than the military conqueror's boots
Yet the lust for land grows
Plazas and Plots for the elite lot
Government homes too
Not one but two
All on starving backs of people robbed
The sweet lands lie parched
For water people pray
The crops perish
The cattle die
The stoves grow cold
As labour is sent home
Fair Pakistan's face is blotted
Mug shots and finger prints are demanded
Worshippers live in fear and dread
Tenants are ejected
Soldiers in snows abandoned
The poets in the mountains and the deserts
Speak of another time
When the country and the individual had respect
Before the Benazir Government left
One pension is too little for some
One state, two jobs, two salaries and two pensions
For retired Khaki specials
Democracy is for those in Mufti
Dictatorship the dream of Generals in Khaki
The British left last century
Their space the Khaki filled
The Father died too quickly
In an ambulance in Karachi
One day the tyrants will depart
Public opinion will set us free
There will be dancing in the streets,
Music and song
Laughter will fill the air
As people rejoice in their destiny
Larkana, Loved-one, I remember
The sweet scent of roses
Of fresh rain on desert sand
Of trees washed by nature's hand
Away I live in a mansion grand
But I long to campaign
On long and rocky roads
In bumpy jeep rides
With flags and banners
With selfless zeal to change
The sad present
Into a smiling future
I want to breathe the breath
Of home,
a breath both fair and fine
My spirit is in one place
My body in another
My mind torn asunder
The Elections were so Unfair
Made of Broken Promises
Billions spent in marketing
A dictatorship as a democracy
That too unsuccessfully.
The European Union called Foul
So did the Office of the Commonwealth
Boxes were filled
Ballots torn
Peoples verdict shorn
By cowards masquerading as patriots
The presidential palace is ugly
In a land with widespread poverty
Parliament has yet to dress itself
With Constitutional power
The phoenix rises from the ashes
Peoples Power will be born again
Centres of learning
I will build for the children of the poor
Provide the aged and the young
Dignity, hope and security
We will raise buildings
Where there are deserts
And stop the weeping of the women of the land
Cry not
For change is in our hands
To reject wrong and embrace right
These days of despots will soon go
Just as other despots did
Memory forever recalls Quaid e Awam
The sword of truth
Who gave his life
So we could live
With legal rights and economic security
With knowledge and Opportunity
With representation and success
With peace and with progress
His name will forever shine
Who can forget him
That historical memory embraces
Forever in its folds.
He who wore threads of fine gold
Tore them for prison cells
He who slept in silken sheets and fed with silver spoons
Threw them aside for the darkness of the death cell
Defying death
The rulers offer comfort
In return they demand conscience
Don't offer comfort
To history's children
To the brave and the bold
The Kurds fought for decades
The Kashmiris do too
The Palestinians refused to surrender
In every continent
In every era
The brave and the bold
Carved history with their bare hands
One has might
The other right
One has the sword
The other the pen
Guns rust and fall apart
Ideas live forever
Tyrant: do not offer comfort
Comfort leaves me cold
Much dearer do I hold
Marvi's ancestral shawl
Symbol of our Treasure
From Marvi I learnt
From past mystic saints
From my dear brother Shah I learnt
That handsome youth who fought another tyrant
That
Were I to breathe my last, living
Away from the home I loved
My body won’t imprison me.
Shah returned home while his soul went free
No stranger to the soil
Embracing his body in death
Making it part of the legends of our land
When his last breath came
We carried him to the hidden coolness of the desert sand
Pride and sadness mixed in our hearts
Swaying emotions
Knowing that his life was given
For a clear cause of liberation
From a Dictator’s occupation
We buried him lovingly
In the land that was his
In a sea of people
That loved him
For his life
And for his death
Killed and yet the struggle lived
The cranes fly to their native hills
My heart longs to fly with them
Invisible chains
Hold me prisoner
The wounds of the past
Fester again
For my country and me
As I see people denied rights
Denied opportunities
Youth looking for hope
Democracy separated from the polity
Dictatorship cuts cruelly to the bone
Undermining the economy
Undermining the society
Introducing suicide
Economic suicide for those too poor to live
Political suicide for asymmetric warfare
Joy left when the stove turned cold
Joy fled when the church and hospital blew
Some sent messages
To forget about politics
To leave the people
To find happiness
They thought it foolish
That the weight of persecution
Could be borne
With a Mother ill
And children small
With the pain of exile
Of a husband separated by prison walls.
They thought it generous
To offer freedom for abandonment
The abandonment of a people, of a land
Of a struggle, of a dream
Of principles and of conscience
I thought it wrong
I know I will return
On a wave of peoples support
Led by the bravest Party of them all
A Party of martyrs
A Party of struggle
A Party that serves
A Party of the people
My enemies wish I never was born
For them it was a torture and a shame
That I became
The first woman leader of a Muslim State
Crumbling centuries of control
Triumphantly proclaiming
The equality of men and women
The pristine message of Islam
Hidden under prejudice and discrimination
Destiny's hand moves on
Writing its own tale
Of triumph and tragedies,
Of wars and peace,
Of bombs pulverising houses
Above the stench of death
Life begins again
The tide of sorrow turns
The sea of happiness awaits
The patient pray and persevere
Loved ones parted meet
Prisoners are freed
Fresh ones take their places
Or flee
Destiny's moving finger writes on
Seasons change
Realities change
The rest is a test
Better a life of test
Than a worthless life of rest
The land reclaims its own
When the dead die
They live again
Becoming part of a land
Centuries old
Holding secrets
Of great civilisations
Of heroes and heroines of bygone times
Shaping history and heritage
Shaping culture
Shaping the future
Time begins
Time ends
We decide
What to do with time
Remember the poor and the wretched
Remember the desperate and the hopeful
Remember God's sacred trust
The children of the land
Do not let your conscience die
For Power and Pride
The scent of the homeland
Wafts through the ocean air
Through continents
Its insistent call
A reverberating sound
Through sunset and dawn
Calling
Through walls
Calling
Through mountains
Seeking to reclaim
Its own
To my dear ones I say
Worry not
Shed no tears
Bear no regrets
These days will pass
After night comes day
After sorrow comes joy
The daughters of the desert know
That Destiny
Cannot Chain
The dream of a people free
Of a youth redeemed
Of a land
Where the sweet scent of justice
Fills the air
Where human rights
And economic rights
Break the prisons of poverty
Break the dungeons of disease
The repression of retrenchment
The despair of downsizing
The evil of unemployment
Prisons hold
Those that defy dictators
Those that pay the price for freedom
Knowing the chains holding liberty will break
That the desert men
Will write of desert courage
Of integrity, loyalty and unity
Baptised in suffering
That a desert maid
Will return home
Hear the wind
It carries the message:
Of dictators that came and went
Of tyrants now particles in the sands of times
How many armies came and went
How much blood was shed
Conquests proclaimed
Kingdoms fell; Tyrants too
The desert sands speak
The desert winds whisper
Truth will triumph
The desert maid will return
Travellers travel bringing news
Of political developments,
I hear of miseries
Of families without income
Of fear of hunger
I hear
And my own suffering retreats
Days pass
Life passes
I am shackled
To the dream of democracy
Unhappy are the days
Far from Malir and Multan
Far from Mardan and Makran
My countrymen are far
No one can reproach them
For they stand strong
As the October elections showed
One day I will recall these days
And forget the pain
One day I will recall these days
When political storms roared
When thundering threats filled the air
One day I will recall these days
Knowing my commitment to my land
Was purified and sustained.
I think of those exiled
from their homelands
In Los Angeles, London, Dubai
Of the days they pass
Some in despair,
Some in frustration
Some with determination
The seasons change
My face with them
Theirs too
Will my fellow villagers recognise
A face
Reflecting the seasons of fate
Night falls
The world sleeps
Darkness fills the air
I raise both my hands
And ask my children
To raise their little hands
Marvi, of Maru and Malir,
In the mists of time
She raised her hands
While the world slept
To God
Full of hope
Praying to see her homeland
Marvi,
We raise our hands
As you raised yours
To God
In hope
For the homeland
I was born in
Buried my Father
Buried my brother
Married
Had my children
Served a Nation
Helped a people
Without telephone or electricity
Computers or emails
Polio drops or iodine
Enter the modern age
But the bullets were fired
Piercing my tall and handsome Brother
His precious blood on the pavement fell
Where once we walked
The angels came
And took him away
To my Father and my Brother
As the Martyrs watched
In July we met
His warm embrace I recall
In the chandeliered Prime Minister's Hall
His special goodbye as he left
His voice on the phone
When we talked
As family members do
The phone came
It spoke of bullets fired
Of Murtaza wounded
I took a plane
With Holy Book in Hand
To the Hospital where he lay
God, do not take
The brother that I love
It was too late
He was gone
Again I buried a brother
The killers buried the Government
Husband was imprisoned
Tiny children exiled
With ailing grandmother
Midnight raids and imprisonment
Torture and terror
Perjury and Perversion
Billions spent on false cases
On propaganda
Psy war and special operations
On a Mother
Courts cal liberated
With different orders
Caught flights daily
From one to the other
Lahore to Rawalpindi
Then to Karachi
The persecutors fell
In divine retribution
The military marched In
Hear the wind
It carries the sound
Of horses that galloped
Of caravans that came
Of tanks that rumbled
Of planes that flew
Before the torch of time
Was passed
As history's pendulum swung
The desert wind calls
Marvi calls
A timeless call
A call
The desert wind carries.
Children: Hear the desert wind
Hear it whisper
Have faith
We will win
Benazir Bhutto
June 21, 2003
