Naima Rashid 
The following is an excerpt from Naima Rashid’s Sum of Worlds. Rashid is an author, poet and translator. Her work
has been long-listed for the National Poetry Competition and Best Small Fictions. Her published works include critically acclaimed translations of works by Ali Akbar Natiq (Naulakhi Kothi) and Perveen Shakir (Defiance of the Rose) and a joint translation from French (Chicanes). Her work and views have been widely published internationally including in Wild Court, Poetry Birmingham, The Scores and Asymptote. This is her fourth book.
Weave
Like a broker of brocades,
a sea of cloth around her,
it was always like this that I found her,
rosary still in hand,
prayer still on lips.
She was a devotee simply continuing
an act of worship.
I came to her temple
like a heathen at a wrong address,
with a kind of dread
and a kind of awe.
She would ease into it gently,
Naima Rashid’s
Sum of Worlds,
Yoda Press (2024).
begin unfurling the mounds of memories.
The tea towels were her wedding gift from an uncle
who wore the tallest turban in the village,
who walked on foot in his polished black shoes
all the miles to the village
where he had fallen in love with a married woman,
whom he ultimately made his bride.
You could find them no more,
these khais from Faisalabad,
her nieces had hand-woven them on a spindle;
they had a rare weave.
The nieces don’t talk to her anymore because of a family feud; these are all she has of them.
I couldn’t trawl that mine of memories
across the mountains I have to trek,
and the oceans I have to sail.
The sum of my life
fits snugly in a North Face bag.
These pieces were not other from her;
her soul was grafted on to them;
the way she would caress the cotton,
slide her hands over the silk,
touch the tassels of a gifted prayer rug,
she was honouring the souls of the gifters,
catching the breath of the parted ones,
touching up in her mind
the homes of those to come.
And all this while I’m thinking
Isn’t she planting a garden of pressed flowers,
plucked from between the pages of time?
Why isn’t she more interested in buds?
A macramé that was the only adornment
she could afford in their first house
which they rented at ten rupees a month,
a wedding dress with hair-like golden thread
at the helm – the only object she carried
when they fled Ludhiana for Lahore,
embroidered platitudes she sold
to make ends meet.
The fabric was fraught with her fight,
it held the stories she knew would never
make it into history books.
Her legacy was sprawled around her,
the question trembled in her eyes.
I couldn’t bring myself to look up,
lest she read that
I am no worthy care taker
of this sea of yards and yarns.
My style is cross-body;
I live hands-free.
Plasma
Sundown is litmus,
the cruelest hour to bear.
‘The silence can get too loud’
‘The TV will drown the silence.’
The way light fell on it
in that lounge like a cavern,
it was always our own silhouettes we saw
in the backdrop of talk shows and dramas.
Our shrinking frames were drowning in that large, looming house.
Sometimes we felt there was a link
between the guilt of those who had left
and the size of the TV screens that arrived.
‘Fragile’, they said. ‘Handle with care.’
Idle Blades
Bad omen
badshagoon—
scissors
when they snap
idly
cutting air
instead of objects.
Elders used to say
it caused fights in households.
Knives
tongues
scissors—
they’re all the same.
Their work is the work of evil
when left unrestrained
So you can blame
a broken home
on scissors,
on blades that snapped on idly
not knowing
whom they hurt
or how much.
Resident Ghost
Over time
the gold leaf will wither
but the imprint of letters burnt in the spine
will stay—
one half of a writer’s life,
the realm of forever.
It’s with humans as it is with books;
a single column holds the frame in place.
Have you ever tried to erase a father?
Look through him like a ghost,
pretend he wasn’t there?
It’s impossible to do, he grows back.
Cut him off, and you’ll see it’s your own limb you lost.
You are never alone
when you walk
somewhere in the back,
the ghost of a father lingers,
too proud for apology
too late for redress.
He’ll linger where you least suspect,
haunt you unawares between yourself and yourself,
a voice steadying your cursive as you write,
a remembered tremor from a reprimanding tap
(‘Stay a certain distance above the line’).
Back in the day, it was lost on you
the beauty of a calligrapher’s pen
and the standard of the chiseled nib (‘Ball points are suicide’)
you were too young to value the attention to little things
not knowing what a thing of beauty it was
to have someone look that far out for you.
He is a resident ghost. Listen,
it’s his voice in your throat
as you speak to your own son
your voice steadying itself
at a timbre
firm enough to keep him from falling
gentle enough to let him fly.
Soundtrack of a Broken Home
It starts as a tear,
then the chasm widens.
Silence is the infill for everything—
what hurts,
what you can’t make sense of,
what you hate,
what won’t go away.
It’s a silence
that turns everything to stone,
a silence that says
it’s too late for amends,
laden with the weight of wasted moments;
the debris of unspoken nothings that were
meant to sweeten the everyday
suddenly standing like a dam of concrete,
the swell of the unsaid
pounding at the gates.
Tiny slips added up, each little nothing
grown into its full charge of rage.
Time keeps score,
and the body keeps score.
A perfume from a pilgrimage
becomes a sculpture
through neglect,
lying in the same spot unnoticed,
immortalizing the clumsiness of the giver,
and the refusal of the taker,
frozen in abstraction at that tilted angle
on the drawing room table
where everyone would see it
several times a day
but say nothing and ask nothing.
Ellipses were the coverall
for question marks and full stops,
missing lines of text,
whole pages left blank.
Just when you think
you had mastered the language of silence,
that’s when the screams begin
They last all life long.
Naima Rashid is an author, poet and translator.