Mother, When Will Your Liberation Come?

Opinion

While we are crying and lamenting for you online and on television, you have already flown far away from everything, like a bird, leaving the familiar embrace of your mother.
Your eight-year-old tender body was battered and bruised, blood flowing continuously; your mother broke down in tears upon discovering the nail marks on your delicate chest and neck. Your bewildered older sister tried to comfort you by gently caressing your small body!
At that time, you were struggling to breathe. The lower part of your body was numb with pain. And your entire mind was consumed with fear and terror. You couldn’t open your eyes. If you had opened them, you would have seen your mother’s tearful, desperate eyes gazing at you. That mother, who carried you in her womb for nine months, nurturing you bit by bit. You were born through a river of blood. You grew up in the palm of your mother’s hand, in the warmth of her chest, within her breath.
Did that precious gem die? Your mother wanted to hold you close, in the palm of her hand, in the crevice of her chest, pleading with the doctor repeatedly. The stunned doctor was stitching your torn, tender vagina with a needle. Administering countless medicines. Bringing oxygen masks. Running around. Trembling. How quickly that frail, weak little body was rushing toward heaven, how swiftly your mother’s time was running out…
Holding your bloodied, torn body in her hands, the doctor wonders, how many more vaginas will she have to stitch before she gets a break? When will her liberation come?
[Many have said that the child in Magura is on life support. Though I don’t know, what kind of life is this, really?]

– Munmun Sharmin Shams
Journalist and Women’s Rights Activist