Sara Shagufta

"At the bosom of the heaven, The woe keeps on spinning the wheel. The Milestone accompanies for hours, But the journey doesn’t end anywhere. The night is ready to meet the dawn, But my distance is not yet over. My children’s misfortunes Have stained my clothes, And the aloneness continues to lick my blood. The straws I gather from the ridge of the suburb, The Sun transforms them into the woes. It’s the eyes, that caused my dreams to burn, I remain under the sneaky watch of my own coffin."

"She awakens by the touch of the hunger, The snapping of the boughs, Yet two-draughts thirst more. God offers hunger, In how many flavours."

"I, who standing at the crossroad, Wish to return to my curve. He, who’s stuck in the blood, Desires to live a bit more … With the wall the shadow might have become one, As the grieves are soothing in the ocean. Thou steal the sunshine even from the setting sun, I rather evade the little darkness of the dawn. And the weary star of the daybreak, When left all alone on the firmament, I regard that moment. Each passing day on this earth Does sever a part of my years."

"I woke up that night to the screams of women. I don’t know when I’d fallen asleep, or passed out, but when I woke up, the manic, lost, women were all around me, walking, shambling. I remember that night, my first night in this asylum – I had retreated into the corner, into the shadows, and looked through the bars, bars that had been chained with many locks. The locks were like eyes: the eyes of a man’s vigilance. As I focused, the lock slowly extended to reveal the form of a man, a man sprawling on the bed: I thought of the violence of beds, of my marriage. The man on this bed was my husband – a man who used to beat me metal-blue to eliminate his fear of women. There were other ways of elimination: polishing his black boots and making them shine, washing his clothes, suspending them onto a hanging wire. And the starvation. And the rising lilt of his family’s voices: awaara. A cuss word, a slap – his marriage to me? – The violence of a mongering dog, his teeth digging into my flesh. His skin the color of a chameleon turned blue. Me? I was a churi, a glass bangle. The house? The impersonation of a ghetto. My agency, his anger. So I ran. I ran to a divorce, yes, and I reached my destination after six months of torture. But the six months led to psychosis. So my mother dragged me here, to this mental asylum. Then I woke up, that night, to the screams of women."

"He grabbed me. We got into a terrible fight. My verdict was given: “You will now be given an electric shock, Shagufta. We need to calm you down.” I tore away, and ran to the other side of the asylum, and on one of its walls, I wrote: “Nazi Camp.” He began grinning."

"This evening, I am being released. I sit in the courtyard of the Psychiatric Asylum and write this. Half an hour ago, the women bid me farewell; they gathered about me: we all began crying together in loud, mournful tones. The eye on the lock shut itself: the door was opened. They stood clinging to the bars, still crying. I turned and asked, perplexed: “Aren’t you happy for me girls? I’m finally free.” “No Sara Shagufta.” They spoke, almost in one voice. “Don’t you know? You’re now stepping into the real mental asylum.”"