The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #48280 Message #724204
Posted By: InOBU
06-Jun-02 - 07:56 AM
Thread Name: BS: Women's rights in Bangladesh
Subject: RE: BS: Women's rights in Bangladesh
I posted this a few weeksago... odd bit of sincronicity... After performing it for Bangladeshi's I have lately dedicated it to Purnima Sheel, there is more on this on the thread titled RAPE a few weeks back... Larry
While working with the Bangaladeshi minority communities thi past several weeks, I was confronted by a photo of a young Hindu girl, gang raped - one of thousands, for whom rape was a weapon of war to drive her from her land. The caption of the photo was "Who will marry me"
This song came to me this morning, and I call it the same,
Who will marry me Words Lorcan Otway, all rights reserved...
I'm a Bangladeshi Hindu girl, I cannot say my name I cannot show my face to you, I'm forced to flee in shame I cannot find the words to tell, what they did to me When the gangs came to my village and robbed my dignity
I cannot speak the words my fear, and horror to relate When the women of my village became, the target of your hate With nothing but my tattered clothes, I have been forced to flee For after my public shame, who would ever marry me
In the decade before I was born, my land was wracked with pain Democracy and Freedom, religious rights to gain All the people of our land, shared the terror of that night to cast off religious hatred and, emerge into the light
I can't understand why the world, allows hate to divide my land Is our pain so foreign to your world, that you can't understand The tears of my nation, a waterwheel could turn Can they not touch your heart enough, our history to learn
How my story ends I cannot say, what's ahead I cannot see Fundamentalism's fertile fields, are starved lands of poverty But in the ruins of my land and life, I can only cry in vain why must I bear the shame alone, who would ever share my pain
One question more I'll ask of you, before I flee my land One question more I'll put to you, I'm too young to understand One question more I must demand, before I turn to go, for the answer to this question, no young girl may ever know
My sister's bodies have become, the target's of your war And our mother's and our grandmothers, for countless years before How can it be our dishonor, why is it our disgrace Why is it not the rapist, who is forced to hide his face