From The Nomad’s Diary

Home….!

Why you are going there?

Well why not?  That’s my home. That’s where I belong to.

She said but aren’t their suicide bombers?  Tears were raining on her cheeks like flood came last year in Sindh. 

 I understood now why she was worried about me.  But before I respond to her…. she said… you know I love you and I don’t want you to die by any crazy Taliban………..who will write songs of nomads…the fish…boats…..?????? Who????????

I said it is not just about aesthetically woven poems in hyper bole of emotions and nostalgia ……… it is also about hungry bellies and that’s why I am going there so that I can write poems of hungry bellies….. …………………you know poems have no meanings……. people have meaning. I am like them and I lived way they live for all of my life accept last five years ….. I am same ….. I can’t be what I can’t be—I am what I am…I can’t deny the truth of Sun’s warm touches in Thar Desert and  unprecedented monsoon of 2007....... when he showed crocodiles in far-away waters to me.............

 I said to her that you know my country has 16 million people and do you think I am more important than them? And how I will write poems about them if I am not there?  I said prophet Youssef was selled in few dollars and you are asking about my worth….. I am nothing of nothing……. You know in our country even Prime Minsters die and "no one knows" who killed them…. my poems….my worth…......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!       You know I am small garbage heap in this huge ocean of leftovers …..But you know …..Nothingness is everything for all nomads…….and that’s what it is…And that’s what it is…….

I said to her you know what ……..the moment Sindhi is born mothers recite in our right ear Shah Latif’s poem …………………………

جي پويون ٿِئي پَساهُ، ته نِجانءِ مَڙهُ مَلِيرَ ڏي.

When I die, bury my body to the land where I belong to”. (Shah Latif)

It is about roots……. It’s not about life or death ….you have no idea my friend what it means to have a place to be buried…in the cemetery of your village.....?  You will only know when you will read Michael Taussig’s  “Walter Benjamin’s grave” or The Graves of Tarim by Engseng Ho.

I love you.
I love your country but i am sorry my friend i have to go home...... you know what it means to have home........?????

Home ..........................home................................where you go all times back no matter what Island of gold you have found....... like Marvi we all want to go back to home.......


Tell my bard friend i am coming to listen the tells of my home....