Poem Response to a Friend: 10 Reasons Not to Shoot Me on My Way to School

In March of this year, my friend Nadine wrote the following.  It rather broke my heart.  And added kindling to the fire in my soul of deep hope for justice and love for this world and its people.  I responded to her with a poem, which you can read below her writing.  Thank you, Nadine, for being my inspiration, and my friend.
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Ten Reasons Not to Shoot Me on my Way to Schoolby Nadine Murtaza (Notes) on Saturday, March 9, 2013

1.  I work really really hard. And not just for myself; my work creates more jobs and livelihoods for others. I provide an essential service, I'm professional and innovative, I care about finding Pakistani solutions to Pakistani problems. I am invested in supporting progress at a national level, I share my best practices openly, I announce my trade secrets, I am sincerely devoted to my work as a teacher.

2.  I'm a good mother. There are days I'm not perfect, but I don't defend myself on those days. I'm always studying, always reading, always learning more. I don't spank and I don't need time-outs; my children are on their way to being polite and interesting and intelligent and simple. I don't amass toys or throw lavish birthday parties, I'm a green mama, who practices tolerance and equality and tries hard to create a socio-economically, religiously, culturally, and Pakistanically diverse community to raise her children in. I'm sure my kids will grow up great with or without me... but hey, if it ain't broke - don't fix it!

3. I'm good for Pakistan. I have great ideas for real projects to improve literacy and sanitation and urban congestion... I'm ambitious and motivated and resourceful and connected. And some day soon I'll have the time and enough money to do all of them. I won't need donor funding because I'll fundraise locally and mobilize volunteers. People will support me because I will earn their trust by building a reputation for honesty, transparency and high quality work. I've started working on that right away.
4.  I volunteer. In my free time, I am a storyteller, a teacher, a designer, a gardener, a whoever someone needs me to be. I believe that contributing man-hours and skills is the best charity.
5.  I stand up against hate speech, whether it's pro my sect or against it. I believe in negotiation and compromise, I know how to teach tolerance and enforce it. I play for team Pakistan.

6. You have no reason to dislike me. You don't even know me. If you did, you'd know that I have a mediocre singing voice but tons of enthusiasm. I'm a decent storyteller, I have excellent memory, I prefer not to wear shoes, I call myself a socialist, and I can invent a song on the go, extemporaneous, just like that! These are not skills that you toss in the gutter!

I can't actually think of anymore reasons...

OK, after a good night sleep, I have two more:

7.  I'm one of the good guys! I pay my taxes (even though I know they are lining the pockets of people in power), I follow the rules, I am a responsible citizen, I keep my head down, I keep my nose to the grind.

8.  I represent a certain kind of person; I am the Pakistan that stays here despite the odds, that invests my money HERE, instead of moving it abroad where it will be safe, where I will be safe, where I will not begin each day with the hope that the shia-haters won't find me today. If you kill me, you send a message of fear to everyone like me, educated people with options and job offers in better places. You'll be telling them to get out. But when they do they will take their honesty and skills and work ethics and sincerity somewhere else and you will lose the legs this country stands on.

9.  How will one less me transform your world? I'm nobody really. This is an absurd reason, you have killed thousands of nobodies already...

10.  If I can't reason anymore, I hope I can at least ask to be killed - cleanly. Not left still clinging to life with some fraction of my current consciousness...I think every day of how great the possibility of driving into an ambush has become. I have too much work really to feel seriously afraid and nowhere to go with my fear - I am here now, this could happen, let's move forward. I am comforted by the fact that I am nobody. And terrorized by it also - if I am murdered, it won't even make the nine o'clock news. It has happened to so many people already, they are already accepting their fate, they have already gone back to their homes, into their silence, who knows maybe they are already recovering...

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your ten reasons

at your words
the trees burn in my heart.
i am no traveler under mountain star skies.
i am a city dweller,
trying madly to love concrete,
despite its roughness and hardness
there must be something soft
somewhere inside.

I am an ocean swimmer,

professing respect for something stronger than me,

grateful to drift in her waters,

alive in the moon,
the tides.
at your words,
the sadness is my blood,
the inevitable loss
imagined so much closer.
may we all pass when our hair is silver,

our cheeks and eyes surrounded
by a thousand laugh lines we'd never try to dismiss,
our hearts still fighting, and yet at some deep peace,
and not a moment sooner,
i pray.

at your words my garden heaves

a hundred seeds like questions

out of the earth to lie panting on the soil,

waiting for the fate

of rain or sun.

our hands are outstretched as through a violent waterfall,

but really,

it is only mist.

how can one know so much

while being ignorant of so many things?

how possibly can beauty

be anymore than a dream?

the answer is to hold these truths,

not release them like hopeful balloons into the sky,

hold them until

with anchor ready, course set, rudder fixed,

we rise.

CBF March 12, 2013