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Author's Note: A few months ago, my dad - a doctor - spent some weeks in Afghanistan figuring out how to rebuild the country's hospital system. This necessitated traveling all over the country, and coming into contact with many different people, and learning a little about them. When he returned, he brought back some gifts for the family, pictures, and stories. (The scarf described in here is real - it's currently hanging in my closet behind me.) From that scarf and its inherent history, and Dad's experiences, comes this poem. It is accurate, though not to specific people. I've now performed it at several talent shows, and it's usually appreciated. Before you read, though, consider yourself warned - it's not happy.
in a land once favored by time
a new lamb makes its feeble way
into the rocky world.
by village standards,
snares the hind foot of a sheep
that bleats in indignation.
With a sure hand
and a swift slice or two
its wool falls to the ground, intact,
a trick he learned from his father.
His son stares by the paddock, transfixed.
Soon he’ll learn too.
next to a dying charcoal fire –
the last of her supply.
Her granddaughter must go out
in her thin sandals in the snow
and collect more fragments
to haul home on her young back.
The grandmother sighs.
Times were better when she was a girl.
Wizened, her hands card
the shepherd’s soft wool.
Maybe the money she’ll earn from this
will allow them to buy firewood
though there are no trees
on their mountains.
draped in a soft blue burka,
hums as she ducks the wool
deep in jars of hot dye
with arms pragmatically bare.
Red, yellow, green, black, blue…
Her mother taught her this
when she was younger even than her niece
who plays with the dyes in a corner.
This income will go into
the young woman’s dowry,
so she can find a husband
(who lives someplace warm,
she promises herself)
and raise children of her own.
The thought makes her smile,
as she drapes the sodden wool
over the hanging line.
at a foggy marketplace,
having migrated to the slums
on the outskirts of the city.
The weaver is left with no money
to buy his daughter’s medicines
from the hawker across the street.
She will die, and soon.
But the money he makes from
these soon-to-be scarves
will heat his house
and spare his large family
the same fate.
Weaving an intricate pattern
his brilliant late uncle designed,
and twining the threads on the loom
his soldier brother left behind,
he drops tears onto the swirls.
as he pants into the market
at the heart of the noisy city
with his employer’s goods
strapped on tight to the back frame.
He packaged them all late last night,
before his young wife went into labor.
Reaching his stall, he tosses the bundle,
and flies off again
towards the war-decimated hospital.
He is almost late
for the birth of his first son.
But he arrives, just in time
to see the fatally engorged head
and deep rabbit lip
enter the world.
His newborn is whisked through waiting crowds
to another doctor, who does what he can,
but little Sayed dies
on the operating table.
for the overworked doctor.
Five bomb victims,
four amputations,
two evacuations,
eight in for burns,
three children,
countless screams,
and an infant death on his table.
He bows his head
and mourns for the little one
who never saw his home.
He thinks of his daughters,
years of experiences away,
and turns into the market
to find them something tender.
His eye falls on a stall of woven goods,
and he stops to swap stories
with its owner.
The man courteously suggests
this scarf over here
for a blond American girl about fifteen.
Its subtle intricacies suit the doctor,
coins are exchanged,
and he walks away with it tucked
carefully under his arm.
eat tonight.
Maybe he can even
buy his small daughter
a pretty bauble for her hair.
finely textured wool sweeps
around my neck
in whorls of black-on-black
and violent red.
Five thousand years of stories and
yesterday’s desperate struggles
quietly reach through history
and brush my cheek.
I cannot reach back
to offer my hand,
but I touch this gentle fabric,
and so touch the hands that made it.
