Eurasian

I was born nearly bald with a few thin locks
like strings of black ink, and eyes
a shadowy chestnut, but an Indo-European
adored for being the lone ivory-toned
baby in a family of wheat-tinged Bangalis.
I am confounded by their adulation of color
and why my nation of henna prefers alabaster
brides, and the luminescence of an onyx
is ignored. This gloomy theory remains
engraved in post-colonial Bengal minds
but not in mine because the onyx of my heart
is not a tarnished paisa to be tossed
into a garbage bag, or lost under the backseat
cushions of my Corolla, and I am no longer a pearl
but a sun-baked brownie tattooed with henna.

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Glory be to God

My mother feeds me glorious God
and religion, nourishes in me
a moderate path with modest living
the same way my Nana nurtured her:
"Eat only what you need, and don't waste any food.
Show your sharp mind, but not your body."
She tells me of the midnight invasion
of Dhaka on March 25, 1971, of Nana
who praised God with prayer beads
that morning prior to encountering flying bullets.
He was religious, woke up daily before dawn,
walked in the dark to the mosque to pray.
On his way home that March,
he heard metallic flies zinging
at extreme speeds by his ears but didn't realise
their danger until he arrived home,
heeded my mother's voice: "the West Pakistani Army
invaded our city late last night."
My mother keeps his picture
in the family album, recalls her memories for me.
I see him now in a roseate snaphot
as a dignified man, quiet and content
with hazel eyes that radiate God-given peace.

Sayeeda T. Ahmed is a journalist at The Daily Star.