Two Poems for Kabul

by Shahzad Bashir

Silent City

I didn’t say anything
must be someone else
or some other sound
I try not to say much
hope others will speak
I tongue-tie easily
I don’t like to repeat
I am hard of hearing

Kabul is a city of millions
a friend once told me
with noise-free teahouses
people eat and travel
make enemies and love
survive bombs and bullets
all in a shocked silence
now forty years on

I don’t know if this is true
I have not been to Kabul
Bamyan and Mazar
Herat and Kandahar
cities I know from stories
written in many scripts
from jewel-like paintings
still life in gems and gold

Communists and capitalists
conservatives and progressives
many stripes of maimed faithful
bodies and capsized souls
operating like dead people walking
making eyes cry the tears of thousands
shattering the pretense of moral being
designer opioid to the affluent classes

My heart grieves
the world has no care left
but that’s the wrong thing to say
the world never had a care
and will never have it—I should know
I read old books full of stark beauty and
killing fields preceding silences that mock
the barrenness of speech without mercy.

Maternity Ward [1]

Yesterday a photograph
eyes and lips pinched shut
trying to stop the body
exploding from pain

An unbearable mother’s day
farewell to beloved daughters
who will no longer feel the warmth
that comes from tiny beings
held in the hollows of one’s arms

Sweet agonies of childbirth
overtaken by the pain of bullets
newborns entrusted to incubators
sorrowful caretakers awaiting
precious huddles from a silent ward

I think of mothers I would’ve never known
and of friends looking forward to seeing
new faces and unruly arms and legs
they will remember as long as they live

May 14, 2020

[1] On May 12, 2020, gunmen attacked a maternity ward in Kabul, killing 24, mostly new mothers.

Shahzad Bashir teaches at Brown University and has published on the sociocultural and religious history of Iran and Central and South Asia. He lives in Barrington, Rhode Island.