By Lamisa Chowdhury
Oh my country,
How did you know my heart yearned to be back home, when even I did not?
How did you pinpoint my soul’s festering desire?
To the point it was a tortured scream that you could hear, but only a whisper to my own ears
I craved kindness, only to be met with the coldness of the West;
When you have been kind to me all along;
Gently keeping me from their cold gazes with your anchal;
You dress me in sharis when my hands can’t move – when tugging a t-shirt over my head feels akin to drowning.
You drape golden chains around my neck, loop earrings through my ears, and fix a teep on my forehead, holding my shoulders secure.
I remember distinctly the day you kissed me, and told me I was born for gold.
My skin is brown, only because of its hue, and its hue alone was destined to carry your gold.
I feel like you are readying a lonely adult like me for school, placing a tiffin in my hand.
You hold my raw heart in your healing green hands,
When I am sick with grief I cannot see, you fly me away:
”Come back home, my child.”
You brush my hair and dress it with coconut oil – like a balm over my heart in turbulent disrepair.
“Come back to Desh.”
You untangle me from the men of countries so suffocating and complicated, coaxing me home.
You whisk me away and tell me to look neither forward nor back.
You ask me what I desire, like an over-lenient mother.
Be it a mango bar or unconditional, soothing conversations in morning monsoon rain,
So long as I come home, you will replenish my empty everything with your pure, doting love.
You know I’m overdue for your warm embrace,
when even I don’t know what’s good for me.
It’s in your people.
It’s in your tea.
It’s in your bright colours, red and green.
Your spices, your laughter, your excitement, urging me towards my dreams.
It’s in your perceptiveness when sadness eats into my mind.
I never have to tell you, you simply know.
You dissipate it like fog in the sunlight with your songs.
You remind me not to stop loving the summertime; how could I?
I’m a girl born to the land of pure, scorching heat after all; not the lukewarm tepidness I have come to know.
I learned to sing from you Desh, and 13 years later, when my heart is run ragged in turbulent disrepair once more, you teach it to me all over again.
You will urge me back home, and ready your coconut oil:
your laughter, your spices, your food, your people, your cha, your bright colours red and green.
I relearn songs from you, my Desh. You replenish my emptiness with songs, and I sing for you once more.
Illustration by Francesca Corno
