Articles for category: Literature

Sajid Hussain

Time

This short poem by Munir Momen has been translated from Balochi by Sajid Hussain   When the man is born He does only one thing Cutting off time with a scissor Everyone’s surrounding is piled up with the pieces of time But my pile has been blown away by the wind of your separation Just ...

Fazal Baloch

In the middle of a tryst

This poem by modernist Balochi poet, Munir Momen, has been translated into English by Fazal Baloch.   In the void of our separation A day can break A night can sleep A city can rest A dream can bloom But this solitude, which is a sleeping soldier, Would vanquish like the sadness over a snuffed-out ...

Fazal Baloch

My son’s classmate

This Balochi short story by prolific fiction writer, Munir Badini, has been translated into English by Fazal Baloch. One day, I saw bulldozers of the Municipal Corporation demolishing the encroachments across the slum area. I didn’t care. The next day, I found a debris stretching up to the main road. I kept walking. On the ...

Fazal Baloch

The urge to itch

This story was originally authored by Naguman in Balochi. Fazal Baloch has translated it for our English readers.   He was perplexed. It had been half an hour he sat contemplating at the canteen for medical students of the Sandemen Hospital. Nothing significant had happened. Just a nurse, passing him by, ran down her hand ...

Fazal Baloch

When the man grows old they become shadows

This story has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch It was an old town. Dusk had just fallen on the crumbling mud houses. A man, standing in front of a bunch of people, was telling them a story. Lanterns were hanging from the doors of the mud houses. Occasionally, you could hear the barking ...

Sajid Hussain

Faith and politics of Balochi script

On Facebook, many Baloch users are changing the way they write their names. Taj Baloch has become Táj Balóc. He was the first to do that in 2012. A linguist and poet, he has been leading a campaign for years to change the script in which Balochi – an Indo-Iranian language spoken by approximately 20 ...

Sameer Mehrab

The story of Master, Doctor, Shepherd and God

Master’s wife prepared breakfast for him: milk tea and parathas, a crispy oily bread. The smell of burning wood was mixed with the scent of parathas and milk tea, pleasing but at the same time had an annoying choking effect. She never said much but today she seemed to be struggling to hold herself back from ...

Sameer Mehrab

Prisoners of darkness

In times my cell is darker than a womb but lack the warmth of it. It’s cold – soul-clenching cold.   I look at the vertical scratches on the blood-splattered walls, Reminder of the desperate attempts of my predecessors, To keep the track of days and nights, To confine their confinement within the limits of ...

Fazal Baloch

God’s letter to them

Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch After departing from the bus, he strolled towards the lamps and sat facing them. His hair had turned grey, his eyes were sunk deep into their sockets and his cheeks had lost most of their flesh. Ahead of him laid an endless and quiet plain. Only a small girl ...

Sameer Mehrab

Escape in numbness

I’m numb as wood And I can’t feel a thing No matter how much sex I have, Or drink like a fish, Or smoke like a Victorian chimney, I am numb and can’t feel the hatred or the indignity they want to inflict upon my soul. I was kicked in the face. Thrown into dungeons ...