Lamiya Fariha

“The Wind Will Carry Us

In my night, so brief, alas
The wind is about to meet the leaves.
My night so brief is filled with devastating anguish
Hark! Do you hear the whisper of the shadows?
This happiness feels foreign to me.
I am accustomed to despair.
Hark! Do you hear the whisper of the shadows?
There, in the night, something is happening
The moon is red and anxious.
And, clinging to this roof
That could collapse at any moment,
The clouds, like a crowd of mourning women,
Await the birth of the rain.
One second, and then nothing.
Behind this window,
The night trembles
And the earth stops spinning.
Behind this window, a stranger
Worries about me and you.
You in your greenery,
Lay your hands – those burning memories –
On my loving hands.
And entrust your lips, replete with life's warmth,
To the touch of my loving lips
The wind will carry us!
The wind will carry us!”
― Forough Farrokhzad

“How can a man understand a woman who is expecting a child. He can't get pregnant. Is that an advantage or a limitation? Up until yesterday it seemed to me an advantage, even a privilege. Today it seems to me a limitation, even an impoverishment. There's something glorious about enclosing another life in your own body, in knowing yourself to be two instead of one. At moments you're even invaded by a sense of triumph, and in the serenity accompanying that triumph nothing bothers you: neither the physical pain you'll have to face, nor the work you'll have to sacrifice, nor the freedom you'll have to give up.”
― Oriana Fallaci, Letter to a Child Never Born

“A lot of women ask themselves why they should bring a child into the world? So that it will be hungry, so that it will be cold, so that it will be betrayed and humiliated, so that it will be slaughtered by war or disease? They reject the hope that its hunger will be satisfied, its cold warmed, that loyalty and respect will accompany it through life, that it will be a devote a life to the effort to eliminate war and disease.”
― Oriana Fallaci, Letter to a Child Never Born

“একজন পুরুষ মানে সম্মুখভাগে লেজবিশিষ্ট একটি মানুষ নয়- একজন পুরুষ মানে একজন ব্যক্তি।”
― Oriana Fallaci, Letter to a Child Never Born