Ve kehraa en – وے کیہڑا ایں

Hey, who are you weaving my bed with my insides

Place my heart at the foot and my eyes at the head

I have to embroider flowers on the pillow

When the earth’s neck is bowed

You don’t load the sky on it

Baba, produce some serpent

And if it is scaly, let it bite me

It is mine after all

You said it, didn’t you, that we give daughters

Snakes and serpents in dowry

So do it

Baba, why are daughters and sons not equal and alike in worth

If the daughter is older, you gnaw at her till she

Is reduced to the size of her brother

If the son is older, then again the daughter, a quarter, half, damaged

Baba, a serpent sits on the Cross, there will be a storm

Vultures are getting restless

Daughters, afflicted ones, are getting nervous

In a frock of lace filigree made of tongues

I leapt the wall

But I still could not learn to speak

Baba O’ Baba, a snake has settled on the earth’s neck

Flecked and mottled

It sits on the necks of my brothers too

We are better off as daughters, better off one-fourth

When the peelu ripened on our debris

We passed from hand to hand to the marketplace

Our teeth broke biting quarters

What milk should we mourn

Who gives change for twisted quarters

Who is this that batters my broken sides

Hey, place my eyes on the pillow-side, I must embroider flowers on the pillow

The lovers’ lobes are drilled in this world

O heedless one! Let me wash my hands

Let me nip one more year from my body

Don’t you know I have advanced today to the next form

And, also, our brindle has given birth to a calf

You say we will go away from here now

Otherwise bloom from the sheeshams will begin to fall

And block all paths

But even the earth allows the snakes to move about freely

We will get through tunneling our way underground, right, Baba

You will return me my kids, won’t you

In the coming year they will catch chickenpox and you will say

Grandchildren, greedy as locusts

Daughter’s children, deceitful, perfidious

She took our embroidered pillows, and bed covers

Our blankets and chadors, even the season

A plague on the passing year, leprosy on the coming one

Put my today on the palm of my hand, Baba

Place my truth on the palm of my hand, Baba

In the middle of the night you will again tell mother

Go sleep inside where the dowry is, if you wish to get your daughter married

And yourself jump under my blanket

But I will not let it be midnight

A snake sits on my neck tonight

Translated by: Waqas Khwaja