Parked the wrong way
baba on my right,
an office to my left
and between them
a river of women in black.
It is that time of year again
rickshaws idle at the curb
news vans nose their way through the crowd.
I am here for documents that
a woman in an office chair needs.
“اتنی دھوپ ہے”
The black cloth gathers sunlight.
Still, she doesn’t turn back.
Only when I return to the car
do I notice the sign near the entrance
the name bordered in jade.
I stare longer than I mean to.
I think of the women.
How certain their footsteps seemed.
I think of myself
holding paperwork against my ribs
as though that too were a kind of devotion.
The heat reminds me:
Seven rounds between hills.
A child too young to understand faith,
too young to question it either.
I ran because everyone ran.
Later,
A warm blush grew beneath my feet.
My mother told me there was a name for it—
a rare bloom brought on by distance and sun.
I believed her.
The green stares back at me.
The crowd continues to move.
I try to shrug the feeling off but
some part of me is still there,
watching women disappear through the gate.
Note from the poet:
In the summer of 2026, in the midst of university applications, I visited the Inter Boards Coordination Commission office, located along the road that leads to the shrine of Bibi Pak Daman. This was in the early days of Muharram. On my way to the office I witnessed large crowds of women in burqas making their way towards the shrine. I walked alongside them, though my destination was a cold office where I was to collect my certificates. I remember seeing reporters, devotion, and hands fanning faces in an attempt to find respite from the heat. What truly captivated me, however, and had me staring for a little longer, was the name of the shrine, inscribed in Urdu script upon a gorgeous green stone. Perhaps it was marble? I am not entirely sure. But its lustre made me want to believe it was jade. I suddenly found myself in a rather self-conscious state of mind, questioning my own relationship with faith. I was deeply struck by the dedication of the women around me. I looked down at my jeans and fitted shirt and felt a strange sense of embarrassment. It was an unfamiliar feeling, one I had never experienced before. To this day, I find myself moved whenever I think back to that afternoon, and this poem is, in some way, an attempt to capture what I felt.
Shahzadi Fatima is a poet from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has appeared in Pink Ochre, Dahlia Literary Magazine, The Tonic Review, and elsewhere. She is an editor at Eleutheria Literary and remains suspicious of being a moth in another life.