Articles for category: Literature

Sameer Mehrab

I’ll meet you some day

I always believed I’ll meet you some day Like old friends Or former lovers Bumping into one another In strange countries At ordinary cafes Where you were not supposed to go Where you were not supposed to be But somehow, someway Our paths cross And we meet for no apparent reason   Some call it ...

Zaffar Baloch

The wailing wall

I am the wailing wall In my cracks and clefts Lay the sorrows of ages In my stones Lives man and his loneliness I am the wailing wall Come to me Sit down and empty yourself I am a sponge In me I behold the flood Of human miseries I have seen man In his ...

Zaffar Baloch

Lahoot e La Makaan

Lahoot La’makaan

All places holy Remind me How lonely I am How lonely I’ve been All these years, For millenniums. Out of me, Grew temples and tombs, The weeds of my soul. Now taller than me, Blocking the sun. My existence is a pilgrimage, From nowhere to nowhere.   * Lahoot La’makaan is a holy shrine in ...

Mureed Baloch

Stay put Time

Stay put Time Thee move too much! Sometimes I wonder what is time made of When I was a child everyone said time never waits I always wondered why won’t it wait When I grew more Time kept ageing But never grew old I have never met Time But all this time, I’ve had a ...

Sameer Mehrab

The day we left

The day we left We left a full moon behind On a pitch-black sky Highlighting the farthest stars and the whole Milky Way and beyond Sprinkled over the wildness of darkness like snow   The day we left We left few more things behind The remains of an old fort Been there since the beginning ...

Sameer Mehrab

Shadows on the wall

When the king is dead When the fire is lit When the skies are bloodshot red The clown will dance A dance of the dead Sowing seeds with as many hands Seeds from which only tomb stones grow     The clown will dance Till the skies are covered in dark robes from end to end ...

Fazal Baloch

You didn’t come last night either

Fazal Baloch has translated Taj Baloch’s poem from Balochi.   The moonlight Adorned herself and kept singing till dawn But you didn’t come The desperate moonlight Buried all memories, hues and shades, and smiles In the bosom of the earth in a vast plain Every thorn of sun-shade shrubs Bit by bit crammed all the ...

Sameer Mehrab

The children of Aleppo

  Death is no longer a horror Life is Life which is dragged around the streets of Aleppo Eyes wide open Half dead, half alive Half awake, half asleep   In times when hate is the only desire inhabiting hearts Men find themselves incapable of believing what fellow men are capable of doing In the streets ...

Fazal Baloch

Why does the moon look so beautiful?

This story about a man who doesn’t know how to laugh is originally penned down by Naguman. Fazal Baloch has translated it from Balochi for our readers.   On the very day of our first wedding anniversary, my wife gave birth to a baby boy. Thus we named him Saalaan*. Days passed by and Saalaan ...

Jalil Baloch

Who’ll write my story?

This short short story by A R Daad has been translated by Jalil Baloch from Balochi.   At the back of the door, on a wall, the old man had written the date and month of his arrival. “I am the youngest son of Saalaar. The day I came here there was no sign of ...