The woman who viewed my life on-screen,
said, she cried in class retelling it.
She asked me, have I at any time
smiled thereafter !
She is from India.
On the final evening of my life,
I walked away from home
in the direction of Syria.
I coaxed my legs,
assuring it of meeting a father somewhere.
I walked towards my father.
I clicked a few shots of father and me
and saved it in soul’s gallery.
In Syria, I unpacked my soul shots
and set it down before strangers
for a father to be found.
They looked away
sighting unsolicited clips
of birth and deaths within seconds
and of splattering warm blood all around
in the game of guns.
And in what way, certain lives, by no means,
merit a bullet.
To the woman from India,
I not ever sighted my father thereafter.
They build-up a family on me.
I became a mother and grandmother.
Yet,
there were only days and nights,
in my life.
I had squandered
the springs and twilights
to a father and Palestine.
Farha is the title character of the Jordanian historical drama film about Palestine during the Nakba, the 1948 displacement of Palestinians from their homeland. The film is directed by Darin J Sallam, who wrote it based on a true story. It premiered at Toronto Film Festival on 14 September, 2021 and is now on Netflix.
Mini Babu is working as Associate Professor of English with the Dept. of Collegiate Education, Govt. of Kerala and now working at BJM Govt. College, Chavara, Kollam. Her poems have featured in anthologies, journals and magazines. Her collections of poems are Kaleidoscope (2020), Shorelines (2021) and Memory Cells (2022). Her co-edited collection of poems is Meraki (2021).
