كب تك

© Fahmida Riaz
From: Four Walls and a Black Veil
Karachi, Pakistan: Ameena Saiyid, Oxford University Press, 2004
ISBN: 0 19 597711 4
Audio production: 2005, M.Mechner / Literaturwerkstatt Berlin

How long?

How long will your love hold for me?
How long?

As long as my womb sheds
Its child-bearing blood?
As long as my colour blooms,
My flesh is firm?
Is that how long?

Surely there's something beyond all that,
A place out there, somewhere.
But what it might be
None of us knows.

I journey towards that very place,
Craving the unknown

That far, that long
You will not be with me.

Translated by Patricia L. Sharpe



© Oxford University Press



published in: Fahmida Riaz: Four Walls and a Black Veil.
Foreword by Aamer Hussein. Karachi: Oxford University Press 2004