Besharam

Nafeesa Hamid

• Publisher: Verve Poetry Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781912565054
• eBook ISBN: 9781912565726
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Learning that your mind and body have been taken hostage is one thing. Learning how to take them back is another. What if those that are returned are different to the ones that were lost?

Besharam – Nafeesa Hamid's glorious debut collection – asks this and many other questions. When does a girl become a woman? When does her world allow her to become a woman? And what kind of woman should she be? The answers aren't readily forthcoming.

As she treads the shifting line between woman and daughter, between Pakistan and the West, between conservative Islam and liberal, Nafeesa has almost had to find a new language to try to communicate the difficulties of her situation. And what a language! At times hard and pointed, at other times wonderfully and colourfully evocative, erupting with femininity, empowerment and rebellion. It is this language that makes Besharam such a pleasure to read in spite of the pain it contains.

This really is a magical first book of poetry.

Besharam contains guest poems from Birmingham poets Mina Mekic, Yasmina Silva and Zeddie

Part 1: Body

Missing

My father walks from door to door,

hands held together like he is doing dua.

They are covered in blood.

He splutters

‘beti’ to anyone who will listen,

blood spraying from his grieving mouth.

He is covered in blood,

Jummah salwaar kameez

bleached white before.

(I wonder how my mother got out the stains.)

A blood vessel has erupted

and my father thinks he is beyond repair.

I wonder if my mother bothered scrubbing the stains out

or if she buried the whole thing instead.

…

My mother is a suburban English village;

quiet and collected,

she has not made a sound yet,

Tasbeeh against her chest.

I think me and my mother found Womanhood that day.

In her absence

and in mine

I felt like she was praying to me.

I heard her words as clear as the call to prayer on a Friday afternoon,

yet the congregation sat at home and wept.

The muazzin answers questions from police.

Later I find out she was praying

for me.

She rebirthed me that night

as part jawan, part still child, still nine.

The string of her tasbeeh beads is fraying

with the dampness of her hands.

Her blooming chest has lost count of the

Alhamdulilah

and SubhanAllah

and Allahu Akbar’s

but here she is,

still praying for my return.

Body

This body is woman. Grown woman. Doesn’t wet the bed

anymore, Mother, woman. Ready to baby, woman. Will not

fetch her brother his drink, woman. This body is touched like

woman. This mouth is all woman with its no-thank you’s and

dryness and gobbled up greed dreams of wanting to write

about being woman.

Your first girl

When my mother birthed me, I wonder if

she smiled. Or thought about chores instead.

I wonder if she hugged me that night, the

next day, a week later in secret, in the

middle of the wheat fields, at the side of her

bed, in the middle of the night. Her first girl.

So much trouble to be born with this girl.

Passport photo

In Big Mom’s kitchen,

in the cupboard with the tea and sugar and cardamoms,

you’ll find a small passport photo of baby me

sellotaped on the left.

A tiny, screaming, alien toddler -

slightly resembling Frankenstein’s monster.

A tiny, alien me

ready

to fly over to England

for a better life.

Sisters

My little sister is 10. When we leave the house, my mother says

to her put on a longer dress! My father says where is her scarf?

Where is your scarf, girl?

They are getting her ready to woman when her woman body

is still curled up foetal, like, let me sleep forever. Her belly

and cheeks plump with Girl, with reading Jaqueline Wilson

and experimenting with the neon pink free lipstick from Girl

Magazine; she is not ready to woman, with her cherry peaked

breastlets, her ears unpierced, unsexed. I do not want her to

ever woman. She is already looking for the power of woman

and my parents are already telling her that woman needs no

power. Has no power. When she was born they were telling

me the same. My body ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• About Besharam
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• ForewordD
• Part 1: Body
• Part 2: Mind
• Part 3: Heart
• Acknowledgements
• About Verve Poetry Press