Ummul Baneen and Zainab | The Women of Ashura

A poem in honour of Ummul Baneen (AS) and Lady Zainab (AS).
#ashura #karbala #imamhussain #nourisardar
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Ummul Baneen & Zainab
Ummul Baneen has a guest… aged decades from all the pain
Zainab cries out for Abbas… and she cries out for Hussain
* * *
After the dust had settled… the men all buried and gone
Zainab raised Abbas’s flag… and told the girls carry on
They reply, as they’re marching… Yazid’s chains have reached our bone
Aunty, it is just too tough
To watch Shimr jeer and laugh
Aunty where is our Abbas
She replies, Abbas is gone… you’ll never see him again
* * *
They return to Medina… land of Zahra’s broken rib
The poet calls the people… and cries, O’ land of Yethrib
They’ve decimated the house… of the father of Zainab
Out comes running a woman
Old age and her voice broken
Please, tell me about my son
He tells her of her children… one by one and name by name
* * *
Abdullah met with the dust… his heart chewed up by arrows
And of your beloved Jafar… by the Forat his blood flows
Uthman yearned the taste of death… how you’ll bear, only God knows
Abbas’s hands were severed
Handless, your lion suffered
Their thirst left his heart shattered
Her cries awaken the dead… and her tears embarrass rain
* * *
She cries, Bishir I beg you… tell me not of my children
I’ve give ten thousand children… to see my beloved return
He replies, and of Hussain… all of his ribs were broken
Once beheaded by Shimr
He was left to lay there bare
His girls watching in despair
Ummul Baneen strikes her head… from wails her tongue can’t refrain
* * *
Her wails echo through her house… ‘Mother of Sons’ no longer called
She is still lamenting when… you have a guest, she is told
Who are you, she asks her guest… a woman frail and old
She says, don’t you recall me?
My grief’s made me elderly
I am Zainab Bint Ali
If you’d seen the things I’d seen… you would never look the same
* * *
I brought the hands of Abbas… and I brought Hussain’s turban
Let us lament together… and fuel this fire within
I saw Abu Fadhil fall… I saw Hussain’s last moments
The crying will never end
To lament, angels descend
This grief too few comprehend
They throw Hussain’s blood upward… ‘return it toward his veins’
* * *
Nouri Sardar
(Ottawa - 07/02/19)

[@Riffat14]

Labbyak Ya imam Hussain a.s 💖

[@Riffat14]

Ummul Baneen had left this world sonless, but proud That the severed heads of her sons had never bowed This is the only mother who ever had vowed That when her son dies, no water he’d be allowed The gravedigger tries to shroud her, she cries aloud: “How can I have a shroud when Hussain had no shroud?” Ummul Baneen is laid to rest, and beside her grave stands A headless Hussain and her Abbas with two severed hands And her prayer they would rehearse… “thank you Allah for Abbas”