Four hours by the side
of the road, falling snow,
grieving people, no sign
of the idiot driver. A jeep
came by with soldiers; they
piled in the foreigners
and the badly injured
and me with a teenage
boy in my arms.
Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah
(his gaze had locked
on my strange foreign eyes)
and I held him tight,
and begged
him to hold on, begged
him from my infidel heart.
In Afghanistan
the landscape is unforgiving
very sparse and rough, very browny-grey
and you discover that time doesn't move
quickly, unlike in the movies
where events happen one after another.
It took a long three hours
to get back to Herat.
Three hours
with a dead boy cradled in my arms.
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