When the Gulf Sky Burns

A Mother’s Lament from Kerala

Tonight, the newsreader’s voice
enters my small house
before the evening breeze.

Words fall from the television
like stones dropped into still water,
missiles… retaliation… airstrikes… war.

I do not understand maps.
I do not know politics.
But I know one thing,
my son is somewhere
under that same sky.

Outside, the coconut trees
stand quietly in the dark.
They do not know borders.
The moon asks for no passport.
Only men draw lines
and then bleed for them.

I sit near the window
where I once waited for your school bus.
Now I wait for a phone call
that does not come.

Every passing motorbike
sounds like news arriving.
Every silence
feels like danger.

You left for the Gulf
with one small suitcase
and a heart full of promises.

“Just a few years, Amma,” you said.
“I will build a better house.”

You built more than walls.
You built hope.
You paid your sister’s fees.
You repaired the leaking roof.
Every month, money arrived
wrapped in love.

And now,
men who have never met you
decide whether the sky above you
should burn.

Tell me,
you who studied in great universities,
you who speak of civilisation,
science, progress, intelligence,

what wisdom lives inside a bomb?
what victory grows from ashes?

Did your mothers not sing lullabies?
Did your fathers not hold your fingers
when you learned to walk?

How does a child become a soldier?
And a soldier becomes a headline?

The news shows a fire
lighting the desert night.
They call it strategy.

I see only mothers
counting breaths across oceans.

In Abu Dhabi,
in Doha,
in Dubai ,
places whose names I learned
only because you went there,
thousands live like you.

Malayalam prayers rise tonight
from rented rooms and labour camps,
from hospital corridors,
from nurses finishing night duty,
from drivers staring at silent phones.

Kerala does not sleep tonight.

I walk to the prayer shelf.
The lamp trembles in my hand.
Even the flame looks afraid.

“Protect him,” I whisper,
not knowing which god listens
during war.

Because surely
no god asked for this.

Anger gathers inside me
like monsoon thunder.

Why must poor sons cross oceans,
to build rich cities,
only to hide from rich men’s wars?

Why do leaders speak of honour,
while mothers learn
the language of fear?

War is announced loudly,
but grief arrives quietly
at the doorstep.

I imagine you eating alone,
checking your phone,
pretending courage
so I will not worry.

I know you.
You will smile when you call.
You will say,
“Nothing here, Amma. Don’t be afraid.”

But a mother hears
the trembling behind bravery.

If planes must fly,
let them carry workers home.
If sirens must sound,
let them announce peace.

If intelligence truly exists,
let it learn compassion first.

What use is knowledge
if humanity remains uneducated?

The night deepens.
Frogs begin their chorus in the fields.
Life continues stubbornly in Kerala.

Yet my heart sits far away
in a desert I have never seen.

I fold your childhood shirt,
still kept inside my cupboard.
It smells faintly of another time,
before oil fields, visas, and war.

O world, listen to an old mother:

Do not send fire
into skies where sons earn bread.
Do not turn fathers into statistics.
Do not test weapons
on the dreams of ordinary families.

Because when bombs fall there,
they explode here too,
inside waiting hearts.

Tonight I keep the light on.
Not for myself.
For you.

Until peace returns,
until aeroplanes carry only passengers,
until newsreaders forget the word war,

I will sit here,
counting prayers instead of hours,
watching the silent Arabian Sea,
hoping it carries my love safely
across the darkness
to you.