“Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast” - Amir Khusro

Our bodies covered in Pheran

our land covered in blood

while burning Oud on a Friday morning

pouring Kehwa from a samovar

or drinking from the Jehlum river
our souls harp shiver
i see a heaven

that is mourning over its own funeral
they've raised hell in Maryams's arms

there is red snow fall and red chinaar

and when our birds fly
their broken wings fall

I see broken windows

and I see broken dreams

and somewhere far across these valleys

I see

a young one

picking up the forbidden fruit and not the gun

azaadi

I see

colors

I see the never ending sky

and with these broken wings

we still learn to fly.


Kasheer -By Madiha Shams Khan

To all the countries/ cities and lives effected by conflicts and their daunting aftermath

May the human race realise that love is the only war worth fighting for
May we see white flags and white doves
May we all learn to love   

Typewriter on a monsoon evening

And days when I don't gaze into the sky for too long or feel the wind in my hair, days when I sit and harp on a memory realizing that how time passes us all by are the kind of days when the typewriter kept in front of me makes me realize that our stories are going to be full of flaws and that our words are going to be misspelled, our sentences won't come with perfect punctuations and that we won't be able to go back in time to rewrite anything at all because
we are the typewriters that can't erase the mistakes they make. 


-By Madiha Shams Khan