feast of the sacrifice

i heard about the floods a few months back
heard about the crop devastation   rural
washouts, livestock drowned,homes & lives swept

away by monsoon, la nina they say. glacier melt
say others. the big picture is so huge.
8 million homeless and in refugee camps.
riots for the food caravans. i am a poet.
i believe the personal is political. the politcal, personal.




ordinance washed downstream
collected in gullys, recovered
in mud as waters receed. beware
pimples on the riverbed,
close to the surface, ready to explode.

cholera in mingora, malaria rife.
we need forty helicopters to ferry
people caught in the mountains, with no passage
stranded, winter coming on. the wheat is gone
cotton is gone, but futures rise and green up
 specualtion's coffers.





so i thought about what i know about pakistan.
which isn't much. they have shariah law there, don't they?
stone raped women to death, don't they?
taliban trying to win the hearts and minds
same as usa. parthenogenic violence.
their leaders are corrupt warlords
the government
is corrupt, isn't it? aren't all governments?




next door in kabul the american copters take to the skies.
they ferry soldiers to the border, inspectors
but there's no more room for saving flood victims
we got a war to conduct. let the pakistanis and
afghan expatriates find their own way out.




i  swam the indus river last week,

followed the water down from peshewar and mingora
left  giant stone budhas  on the mouontain face
and Rahman Baba called to me as i swirled  by


Sow flowers that your surroundings become a garden.
Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your own feet.

oh pollywood, i dove as bridges collapsed but i couldn't
stop you, stranded by   the cinema
making love to scores of afghani musicians before the clerics
move in from across the border and silence song again.

a few miles north of here, the rain still falls.
in the canvas tent, farzana is telling mijur "this is how
you clean your baby. this is what causes a rash,
if your breasts are sore,wash them then
rub butter, oil , lard, if that's all you have"  as she
bends over the baby to change her diaper
mijur can see tight folded skin along her temple.
she wants to ask if it was oil that the match found
or lard. wants to know if smoke made her pass
out, or if she felt the flames rising like a river
from her burka to her skin. but she doesn't.
she listens as farzana says"  i know\
there's so much of it now
but you must not drink from the streams,
they carry cholera. try to get the clean
water, try to get the germ killer tablets."
mijur just learnt about germs. doesn't
know whether to believe in them or not.  



i scatter a handful of poppy seeds on the rocky ground
dribble off to a little stream, piece of silt on the move.



R



pakistan's  a country of contradictions. unlike its surly
neighbor, pakistan's women have more freedom.
sufferage is in the constitution. they have female
allotments in government (10%), even had
a female prime minister. she was
unable to complete her first term 

but  was re elected several years later . oy, but this isn't
a  history lesson. i don't want to lecture.

a country caught between the excesses of the taliban
and the excesses of india. a country struggling
with its past, trying to move into a future sandwiched
between two entrenched systems,  forced into 

being a buffer zone between islam and infidel.  somehow
women have more freedom there
than they do in almost any other islamic  country.
however, there ain't no rape kits.the marriages are mostly
arranged, however, i would like to think


there is, somewhere, love. listen to this pashto poet
and tell me there is not...



"if you give a drop of water to the thirsty
it will become a river between you and hell"




see,  i don't want farzana  to get raped anymore.
i want her to be ok. i want the fire
to leave a lasting mark on her psyche, the way it has on her skin.


i want that message to be "you can do anything you want.
what do you want"



?




(*&&&



















“If anybody asks you, don’t tell them my name; don’t say I had anything to do with it.’ `
farzana's husbands grabs his wife's burnt arms
whispering harshly. she survives
but does  not
go to her husband's home. "i did not want to bring
shame upon my family name" she cries
  in the burn room," i wanted
to be your good daughter, father".  he cannot
meet her eyes. his daughter, disfigured for life
by her own hand. he curses the
medicine for saving her,pays the hospital,
brings her home.


"there is a cousin in pakistan" he tells faranza
"in pakistan,  shiriah law is more lax.
  they educate women. you are not too old."
he sees the fear in her exposed eyes, above the hajib

"allah must want to use you as something other
than mother, since he let you live."

farzana looked dully at her father. "do you mean i will not
see my daughter? "

what do you care for her now?

"i do not want
to bring shame upon my family." she travels
to mingora with her oldest
brother, the husband of her husband's sister.
she sleeps in her cousin's laundry room
and rises before dawn to prepare
breakfast for the family of six.
her father pays for a private tutor
a woman, an engineer in the soviet days
two hours, one day a week. mostly,
they talk of escape. this is how farzana


thinks of the concepts the soviet woman
has her read.  capitalism, communism,

entitlement, fuedalism, rent. 
rent
is  new concept to her. she rolls it around
in her head, folding cousin's laundry, scrubing
floors, grinding sesame and falafel.
 from sun up to sun down,   its taste
on her tongue. a woman may rent her own rooms
in mingora. a woman may go to market
without an escort, a woman may uncover her face
but faranza never does.








faranza remembers the helicopters in kabul
on the journey to pakistan. she asked her bother
what the symbols painted on the sides meant
thinking they were names of the huge black beasts.
their terrible thumping of the air drew
her breath first out of lungs intirely
then forced it back down her throat


when the rains came and came there
was no where for the water to go. farzana
waited on the rooftop with her cousins
huddled under the bedframe's canvas.
together they watched the river

invade the floors of their home.
it marched up the stairs quicker than
something that large should be able to.

she clutches the bundle with her few
possessions.   the books
from the soviet engineer were wrapped
deeply inside her second hijab
she tried to protect them from the water
but the whole bundle fell  as she shakily
climbed the ladder up to the helicopter.
later she wept for the books
but during the climb she wanted to follow them.


nothing good comes from calamity.
when will allah let her die.











*)(*






on the outskirts of the refugee camp
we have our tent, covered by blankets
we bartered for in the summer

in the one warm room
our family moves in out in concentric circles
to the core of warmth. we all get our turn to be
relaively warm. holding my hands out
to the fire, i give thanks to allah
for the season . it is good to be deprived
it makes the soul stronger.


*&(&&
























 )&&


when they ask for volunteers
farzana ignores her cousin's jeers
walks into the camp adminstrator's tent.


i can read. she says. i studied with an engineer.
i want to help."you can aide the nurses
with the women". the hospital tents
burst with babies, women in hijab  and burqua
but in mingora a woman may wear a shalwar kameez.
farzana admires the open veil, the lovely circlets
of metal and twined ribbon worn atop so many
shades of raven tresses. she will not cover
her eyes anymore, but she draws the hijab
across her scars each morning, and there it stays.



in the world of the helicopters, a woman might.















i am a poet.
i believe the personal is political. the politcal, personal.
i take things to heart