Aqsa’s Face 

I went for a walk along a paved path

My head filled with saddest thoughts

A razor-sharp knife stuck at my heart.

 

My eyes wet and my head hung low

I vacantly gazed at the edge of the road

When suddenly a growing plant I saw

Bursting forth from dark asphalt

Visibly splitting the surface apart

It had sprung through the soil most harsh

With a lovely flower and a sturdy stalk

Braving this world on a distant path.

 

My eyes vacant no more; locked instead

As a thought crept up in my head

Here I witness the most powerful force

Embodiment of life’s impulse to grow.

This pavement is an unlikely place

For a little shrub to grow and be safe.

 

I could not help but further reflect

If this seed in this harsh soil left

Or traveled and ended up there

Under this adverse and hostile layer

Contained not by the ill willed brute

It drew its nutrients and made it through.

No matter its soil was dry and hard

It pushed its luck and made the top

Breathing the air and its moistened flow

With Nature swapping back and forth

But this innocent little plant busy with its chores

Unaware of what life might have for it in store.

 

When the keeper of this road may come and find

A growth on the roadside unwieldy to his mind

He may not stop to ponder things

To see things fairly and clearly think

To think that this young shoot of awhile

Might he re-plant in another soil.

Created for life’s purpose to fulfill

God made no life for another to kill.

 

But Oh No!

The keeper will come and strangle its growth

He will pluck it away with brutal force

Like Aqsa’s father had done in her case

O Beautiful Flower! O Aqsa’s face!

 

O Little girl, O Our Daughter!

We let you down, we are no fathers.

Now, we cry for you and cry the hues

But now we must all pay our dues.

We lament and lament and I sadly think

Is it Twenty First century or Six Fourteen?

I heard Quran’s lament of those olden times

How in saddest terms it portrayed those crimes

“When they hear the news of a daughter born

Their face turns dark, with grief they are torn

By the ill they see in the good news

With shame from people they hide and muse

Will they keep this shame or bury it in the dust

Both are evil choices and choose they must”

 

O Beautiful Flower! O Aqsa’s face!

May that we learn to change our fate!

 

Mutaal Mooquin

December 21, 2007

(Quoted lines of the second last stanza are rendition of Quran: 16: 58 -59)