Kabul, 2021
I am flying, I am falling,
as some go to behesht,
some to dozakh,
I am in limbo, watching
the plane to paradise
flying above.
The engines growling.
Two pale wings
from one sky to another –
its fat belly – a slippery slope –
too wide to embrace –
To tie myself
to it with a turban cloth
failed – made me topple.
Unlike the embrace
a brother gives, a mashooka –
a flying boat is impossible
to hold on to.
With the nervousness of a refugee
and in a tearing hurry,
it’s going up, up
above the mountains,
indifferent to my plight.
Leaving me where I am:
midair,
flying and falling at the same time:
like the autumn’s whirling dust,
an orphan kite
from Friday’s kite war, the flying chaff
of the wheat-thrashing season.
A farishte
cast out of jannat, hurtling back —
As my brothers
are egging me on,
on the tarmac.
They will carry my laash home.
When my insides will be out
of my stomach cavity,
blood will seep out of my body
as latex seeps
out of the stabbed poppy stem.
Even though I will remain
in Kabul,
reposed till qayamat,
they will tell each other
I have escaped the city.
(The poem was first published in Outlook India: https://www.outlookindia.com/culture-society/five-poems-about-people-across-the-world-weekender_story-328626)
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