“Pencil vs. Camera No. 3” by Ben Heine
In winter the school year begins,
we play gili danda and oonch neech
in the schoolyard,
We race home till our legs hurt —
On Saturdays, we sell ice in the streets;
on Sunday, my sister is born
swaddled in blankets,
In spring, we give each other
solemn promises,
before the holidays
and ‘love you forever’ —
cards made from old calendars,
In June, I finish writing the English alphabet,
In March, my slate is wiped clean,
Monsoon seeps
in from under the door — strewing
the floor with leaves,
baji lets us sleep in her spare room
In July, I am gainfully employed,
We steal cold plums from the fridge
and lick them off our fingers,
We use our knowledge of numbers
to play in the dirt,
We write our name in lines of dust
on the bonnet of baji’s car,
The cough, the doctor at the big hospital tells us,
is tuberculosis.
We sit under the jamun tree while our mother is buried,
We press the jamun seeds deep into our palms,
In winter the school year begins.
~ Rakhshan Rizwan
Rakhshan Rizwan was born in Lahore, Pakistan and then moved to Germany where she studied Literature and New Media. She completed her M.A in British, American and Postcolonial Studies from the University of Münster and is currently a Ph.D candidate at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.Â
