The Girl on the Rooftop

By Mosarrap Hossain Khan

In this colony of refugees, history is lived
in the unpaved streets lined with open sewers,
in the molten iron of the factory spitting out
shiny Ambassadors and Contessas, in the stories
of old women with sandalwood paste on their
forehead, in the muddy cataract-filled eyes
of old men dozing off in the winter sun.

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My small grilled window frames a patch
of sky and the sloping asbestos roof of the
un-plastered house. The girl in a white sari,
her eyes luminous with the blue of the sky
of her village, searches for home
amid shabby concrete rubbles
of this colony. She crossed a border too
like those who came before her.

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My eyes seek out her loneliness. A Muslim man
reminds her of home. In this colony of
refugees, history is relived in longing for the
wrong man.

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Mosarrap Hossain Khan teaches at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India. He is a founding-editor at Café Dissensus magazine.

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