The Hindi-via-British Curse (Bint)

Lyrics

[Intro]
Little word.
I'm sorry for what they did to you.
I'm sorry for the journey.

[Verse 1]
In Arabic, you were simple.
You were 'daughter.'
Spoken in the dusty light of a Cairo afternoon.
A neutral fact. A name for a girl.
In the Levant, you were kinship.
You belonged to someone.
You had a home in the mouth.

[Chorus]
But how does a word for 'daughter' learn to be a fist?
How does it cross the sea in a soldier's kit bag and become a stone?
A sound to throw at another daughter.
This is how a language can be made to grieve.

[Verse 2]
The Oxford dictionary says 1855.
A curiosity brought back from the heat.
By 1910, you were in the barracks.
Passed around with warm ale and cheap tobacco.
A joke they wrote in letters home.
A souvenir, its meaning left behind in the sand.

[Chorus]
How does a word for 'daughter' learn to be a fist?
How does it cross the sea in a soldier's kit bag and become a stone?
A sound to throw at another daughter.
This is how a language can be made to grieve.

[Bridge]
The sergeant in the desert, 1942.
He used you to mean 'less.'
He used you to mean 'nothing.'
And the woman who heard him...
her silence isn't in the dictionary.
Her memory of what you were meant to be.
That part is gone.

[Outro]
They took your warmth.
They left this cold shape.
Bint.
Daughter.