Sacrifice
he was still
wet
her Hindu
amniotic fluid
on his new
Pakistani body.
two days or
two kilometers that way
he would have been Indian
but the border had been drawn
by white hands
and swords had been drawn
by brown ones.
either way, he was
and now, wasn’t.
she called him Yousuf—
the name my Muslim grandfather
would have given him
pulled out his tiny body
from between her legs
stumbled into the darkness
far away from the camps
dug a hole with bare hands
and placed him in his cradle.
the next night, wolves
looted the earth.
by Ain Kahn
from Rattle Magazine
Author’s note:
“I grew up with stories of the Partition of India, and the trauma and heartbreak it inflicted upon millions, including both sets of my grandparents. I am struck by the continued sacrifices and loss of lives required to uphold the identities of these two nations, which share so many social, cultural, linguistic and artistic commonalities, because they were at one point, one.
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