The Life and Death of Afreen

Today, at 11 A.M., Afreen finally succumbed to the bites, blows and burns caused by her father. The report said that she suffered multiple convulsions and ultimately died of cardiac arrest.  Three months was the duration of the life she lived or let's say suffered. She was brought to the hospital three days ago with burn marks and multiple dislocations in her neck. I'm looking at an old clip which shows her delicate and small structure tubed all over, her chest rapidly rising and falling, while she is unconscious, lying on a hospital bed about twenty times her size. Her mother has put her head near her daughter's legs. She hasn't left. I had almost begun to pray for her recovery, when I realized that the clip is from yesterday. I pull myself back to reality,  to today, where she is dead.

 I don't want to see it. Its so painful. Yet I see it. "Baby Afreen is no more". The headline goes on & on & on... I feel a hole growing inside my guts. I helplessly fight my brain,  and try not to imagine scenes of her and her father.  She was his daughter. An incarnation of his, maybe a female, but his continuation nevertheless. 

I am angry , I am helpless, I am burning & I'm welling up. Fictitious visions of a beautiful life that Afreen could have lived, torment me beyond tolerance.

Hello world, my name was Afreen,

I was born to love and hatred akin

I did not know pain, 

But then I was bit and beaten

I did not know smile

I could never do it for a while

Life started and ended before I breathed

Like some numbness it prevailed

Faint voices of my mother

Crying to fight my torture

The man who brought me here 

Was the same who banished me forever

I was created by him

Somehow I never got to see him

His hands were all so unkind

How could he kill his daughter's body & mind

They hated me from the day I cried

They hated me for the body I carried

I could not even know why I was born

Some evil in some past I must've done

I was greeted with frowns,

They thought I would let them drown,

Never gave me a chance

Never wanted me to keep balance

I could not know your Earth

Its green and its past

I could not make friends

I wasn't afforded that much sense

I will know not what is a hug

A pleasure I was supposed to get a lot

I will know not the birds, the seas, the skies,

My world started and ended with cries

I could not kiss my mother

My lips were shut forever

Before my hair could learn to curl

They were dragged to satiate some call

Teeth were sunk in

When kisses were to be left on my skin

I was welcomed by pain

Unfair ! I underwent it in vain

It all became too much

One day to a ward I was rushed

Tubes galore were slided

Though silently I chided

My mother sat there looking & praying

She often stopped to fancy me playing

I knew my mother's pain

She too swallowed it in vain

I did't even know how to pray,

The hands that hated me night and day ,

Were the ones that ought to have taught ,

A beam of mercy desperately I sought

My mother, I worried what would happen to her

I knew I was nearing to say 'adieu' & come back never 

Ever believing, ever hoping to revive and take me back

I'm so sorry ! I wish we could have run more than this small track

I had to go, the angels could wait no more,

I wish I could tell my mother, its a better place that I'm travelling for

God must know what he does and what he says,

I've heard He works in mysterious ways

My body was broken in places

A new life, Yet counted were my days

But my heart broke then

When the healers rushed in

They must have noticed I was leaving

Broke mid way my mother's praying

She howled and held and kissed and prayed

She begged, I know not who, but onto her prayers she held

I was growing cold, she must have known

She held me close with her tears rolling down

Those arms where up I had woken

Now held me again when I was being taken

Then...it snapped, that chord that tied

Me and her, My life was over, in her arms I died.

                                                                              -  Afreen