Bas Ya Bahr, the Cruel Arabian Sea
by Rohini Sunderam

Oh marvellous waves of blue and green
You who have let your colours bleed
Inside an oyster’s shell
Forming the nacreous iridescence
That imbues that tiny seed
Of pain, hurt and misery
With a luminescence
Soft as tears
And fluid as satin
The one they call a pearl.
 
For how many centuries have you sung
Your siren songs to divers
And sent your whispering promises
Hidden inside conch shells
To the pearl merchants
Whose fronded fingers
Flow like tentacles
Ever-reaching out to buy
Possess, to own and enslave
The one that they call: Pearl?
 
And why oh waves are you so hungry
That you should covet the lone life
Of an old pearl diver
Crippled from so many years
Of plumbing your depths
To seek the oyster beds
Pinching his nose with a date-palm peg
Plunging down into the dim light
The green light of your stygian depths
Seeking the lustrous light of a pearl?
 
And just as you surrender
That one prize oyster
That holds inside its mealy mouth
The treasured sphere
Spun from anger, hurt and hatred,
Grown large enough
To tempt a merchant, trap a sheikh…
Is that oh sea, oh Bas ya Bahr
When you decide
That this man belongs to me?

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