In memory of two-and-a-half-year-old Zainab who was ruthlessly raped, tortured and killed in a recent incident in Charsadda in Pakistan and to all the other little angels whom we continue to fail every day amid an alarming increase in cases of child sexual assault and abuse.

Mother I Became the Plaything Whilst I had Gone out to Play

I had often roleplayed a doll pretending to be the Barbie that mother adored

Hosting my friends to my doll tea party, with smiles and fragile teacups galore.

While playing in the small courtyard of my warm abode that day, I had said,

“Mother, with Nicky and Shazo, I’m going out to play; mother for long I won’t be away.”

“Stay around little Zainab”, mother had admonished, “Do not go afar.”

How far would my baby steps take me, I had thought, how far would I manage to go?

How far would my leaps of faith lift me, I had wondered, as I wandered off and fro.

The land that lay outside the walls of my home, wasn’t that my home too?

My dear land, the habitat of my people, mother, father, and mine too.

The future of this land and its people, I was a seedling so keen to sprout

The world was on my side, as I would hymn pehla kalma, humming here and about.

I remember raising the green flag on the fourteenth day this August

Feeling proud, protected and loved, just like the snug of mother’s cuddle.

Secure in my thoughts that dreadful day, I was swept off my tiny, wobbly feet

Muffled and muzzled, trembling and terribly tweaked.

“Mother, where are they taking me? Mother, I did not drift afar”

“Mother please answer me, for I have not known a world outside yours.”

The tearing of my tender flesh, my tears, my shrieks and my pain,

Their inhuman brutality, savageness, barbarism and disdain.

None was heard or heeded by you O mother! Nor did God seem to care

As I shed and bled helplessly, stained and brutally smeared.

As if raping me wasn’t enough, they slashed and cut, slit and scathed

What had I done to deserve this, I thought I later heard my father ask.

My fault was to be born a girl, a woman in all my glitz and glory, yet to be

The girl child who had a lot to upend and endure in a life that was, yet to be.

I’ll ask God why He let this happen, I’ll ask Him for the sake of all Zainabs, Marwahs and Madihas

I’ll ask Him why was I born a girl, if only to be objectified, threatened and abused from birth.

Mother, keep my doll house tea cups safe, don’t let them be afflicted like me

Keep all my toys safe and sound O mother, for in my toys you might find me.

Broken toys are like corpses, am I one too? Disfigured and mutilated, victim of a heinous ploy

Even toys are not maimed and mangled this way; mother, was I not even worth a toy?