Fatima Bhutto's poetry in Mascara Literary Review

Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul in 1982. Her father Murtaza Bhutto, son of Pakistan's former President and Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and an elected member of parliament, was killed by the police in 1996 in Karachi during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto.

Fatima graduated from Columbia University in 2004, majoring in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 2005 with a Masters in South Asian Government and Politics.

She is the author of two books: Whispers of the Desert, a volume of poetry, which was published in 1997 by Oxford University Press, Pakistan when Fatima was 15 years old. 8.50 a.m. 8 October 2005, a collection of first-hand accounts from survivors of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, was published by OUP in 2006. Her third book, Songs of Blood and Sword, will be published around the world in 2010.

Fatima wrote a weekly column for Jang - Pakistan's largest Urdu newspaper and its English sister publication The News – for two years. She covered the Israeli Invasion and war with Lebanon from Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and also reported from Iran in January 2007 and Cuba in April 2008.

Fatima’s work has appeared in the New Statesman, Daily Beast, Guardian, and The Caravan Magazine.

Her latest book, Songs of Blood and Sword, will be published by Jonathan Cape in Australia this spring.

Photograph: Benjamin Loyseau

Karachi air

Breathed in through the lungs

Is sickly sweet

Like honeycomb left out to rot

In the warm, unrepentant heat.

Or else,

It is thick, smoky

Like mesquite

The evening scent of garbarge burning

At the first break of dusk’s early light.

Mynah birds and ravens caw

A jealous chord

Singing to the street.

At midnight

I can hear the poor sweeper man

Sweep sweeping

The moonlit littered roads.

I sleep in bed

Covered in a sheet of sweat.

There is no electricity now

In this deadened August night

I trawl

Middle Eastern airlines, terminals and luggage belts

Stuck alongside students,

Honeymooners in black robes and white thobes

And slave labour, working through the night.

Hiding my name on my boarding passes,

A thumb obscuring the sight of letters, destinations and foreign nights

And inventing new fictions,

Identities

And family trees.

My legs are close to clotting

And my bags unnecessarily heavy.

Qatar, Etihad and Emirates

I count them off as lovers

I use in desperate times of need.,

Flying out every month

Pretending that I’m free,

Subsisting on airline meals.

Parting from Karachi

At departure gates

And onwards worldwide.

I wish it well

My love unkind.

Good riddance,

Farewell.

Memories are dulled as the pilot starts the plane

Nostalgia side swept as stewardesses buckle belts and enquire about meal time.

Nauseated

Goodbye.

From above,

Even our city’s lights

Look bright.

Even the noisy traffic

Seems mild,

The congestion meek,

The airwaves clear.

From the sky,

From a passenger plane,

Filled with labourers

Dressed in January sandals

And drinking whisky

They’d never get otherwise,

Neat

And singing ghazals

To lull them to sleep,

This mangled city,

This wretched, wretched home

Loses so much heart.

But,

Three days later

My chest hurts for a sound

Of something familiar

An exhaust broken on a motorcycle.

The smell of the salty, smoky air.

The taste off a broken beetel nut

I’d never eat at home

And I imagine

It’s worth

Love

Some of the time.

He moved my body

continents,

Pressing gently

On the underside of my knee.

It was winter

When he sold me,

Seventy five degrees

I sleep on tarmacs

Eyes half closed.

I have become an exile

With an open home.

My valise holds all my shirts

And coats

I’m packed for winter

Wearing summer clothes.

I left behind a country once,

I can’t remember when.

Underneath it all

I’m bare boned

Afraid

Very simply alone.

On white ironed sheets

I wait,

Cold.

A knock on the ceiling

A boot against the floor

Sticky remote control at the foot of the bed

I cower

Concierge

Bellhop

Fire escapes winding under my window

And an alarm reminds me

I ordered room service way too long ago.

In nine years

I hardly wrote a red line

The crawl inside me subsided.

In the car,

Sunday, past noon,

The freeway pulled me down

And drudged up my lines.

I spoke for him,

For his embrace,

Coated with warm sweat

In a parking lot,

For the kiss,

And the scrape of his beard

As I breathed him in

One more hurried time.

So, I wrote him these lines,

Meaningless,

But mine

I go,

Leaving him,

My only memories

Inside a kiss,

Held in by his lips

In a claustrophobic garage

In which our farewells were disguised.

Source :

http://www.mascarareview.com/article/214/Fatima_Bhutto/