Lahore Blast

By Hinnah Mian

The world does not cry for us.

 

They watch a mother

fall to her knees,

as if at prayer,

before the body of her dismembered baby,

her forehead resting on the corpse

as if she is performing sajdah.

 

The world will not cry for us.

 

They are white church halls,

white church dresses,

white hands coming together

to form a prayer not meant

for the dirt road colored skin

of my people,

white hands refusing to pick up

the remains of 72 brown bodies—

we lay in the mud

and you call it camouflage

and step over us.

 

The world is not crying for us.

 

They do not know

that our skin is not mud,

it is the spiciness of chai and

the sweetness of halwa.

 

They do not know

that this playground is not

a battleground,

these little bodies

are not soldiers—

 

You wail for god,

but when we do the same,

you say the bomb blast

deafened your ears

so you did not hear us.

 

Hinnah Mian is a freshman English major with a concentration in Islamic Studies at Kenyon College. She is first generation Pakistani American whose family still resides in Lahore. The 2016 suicide bombing in Lahore prompted her to write this piece.