From My Memory to Her Heart – A Poem by Khawar Khan Achakzai
On August 5, 2019, Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution were revoked to enforce the status of Union Territory on the state of Jammu and Kashmir without democratic consent from the Kashmiri people. As a measure to quell expected upheaval, the internet, TV channels, mobile telephony, landli
From My Memory to Her Heart
My country has a telephone number,
it starts with a K and ends with grief.
The peaceful soldiers stay on guard by the gates
of the telephone exchange,
not a heartbeat escapes their curfew.
They check the identity cards
and love letters,
written when the phone lines
have been drowned
in the static of marching jackboots.
While waiting,
I wrote out of a fading memory:
soldiers built papier-mâché coffins
of applewood, that smelled of orchards
and fumes of gunpowder.
While waiting,
I wrote out of a fading memory:
ambulances carried turquoise jars
of “missed calls”
their number plates read JK01-K-GENOCIDE.
I wrote out of a fading memory:
poems with no meanings
captioned on the walls of army camps
with torn flesh and broken bones.
Not a heartbeat escapes the curfew,
the envelopes stuck in the grooves
of barbed wire;
from my memory to her heart
her mail remains guarded by the peaceful soldiers.