As many of you know I have been working on this painting, with some poetic verses written on it in Urdu language. If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen it in different stages in my stories.
It shows a young woman excited and energetic to explore the world and live her life, while in the other corner it has an older women who has lived through the oppression. Every time she tried to live her life there were barriers were put in her way.
The poetry is a few lines I wrote in Urdu, meaning:
Would someone ask those who deny me my right to live:
Who has made you a god on earth?
Who has given you the right over my breaths?
The bird and the cage show her fleeing to a state of freedom, to a place of nature where God’s laws are the only ones put in place, where oppressors on earth hold no authority.
There’s so much that women go through; fighting the preconceived notions regarding females and their role in life. It seems as if we are denied the right to be other than a certain mold, the right to be happy, the right to be strong and simply the right to exist. At times, it certainly seems, if we ask for a little bit of oxygen in order to breathe even that’s too much to ask.
I raise my voice today for those sisters who are suffering in silence simply because they’re women. We have to stick together as women and support each other in pain, in suffering and in what we do to be strong standing against any oppression. Let’s acknowledge and appreciate our journeys and keep uplifting each other as daughters of Eve.