“Do you know a love poem in English?” Rahmat asked me one evening. We sat in the first of what seemed to be an endless array of cramped kabob shops casting unanswered light into the deep Kabul night. Here, Rahmat worked fifteen hour shifts everyday of the year except for Eid, when he returned to visit his family in a refugee camp in Pakistan. Though an Afghan, he came to Afghanistan for the first time eighteen months ago. “We are strangers here together,” he said when we first met, “you and I do not belong.” It was our principle bond.
He also loved the English language, but his long shifts left him little opportunity for study. I spent many a night helping him practice English while I ate. As we spoke, the streets gradually cleared and people hurried home to their families, fearful of whatever lawlessness might be unleashed in the growing dark. On this particular night, I considered the limited number of poems I committed to memory the past year.
“Okay, I’ve got one,” I said. “It is about love. But it’s also about overcoming.” He nodded excitedly and flattened a yellow strip of crumpled paper on the tabletop. I printed slowly and legibly as he craned his neck to see the words:
“Underneath an abject willow,
Lover sulk no more.
Act from thought should quickly follow,
What is thinking for?
Your unique and moping station
Proves you cold.
Stand up and fold
Your map of desolation.”
I asked Rahmat if he wanted the rest of the poem, but he said it was enough. I shrugged and slid the paper over to him. “That’s the important part anyway,” I said. He read it aloud.
“Fold your map of… desolation?” he asked.
“Desolation,” I said. “Do you know this word?”
Rahmat shook his head no.
“It’s very beautiful,” I said.
He nodded eagerly.
“It’s like destruction.” The word did not register on his face. “When everything is in ruins,” I said.
“Ah ruins, yes yes,” he said.
“And the map only leads to ruins.”
“Ruins, yes yes.”
“So the poet says, ‘Stand up! Forget all of that! Forget your map. Forget the ruins!”
Rahmat’s eyes glinted in the dimly lit shop. “Ruins!” he repeated.
The word lingered as another customer entered. Rahmat stood and served him, then returned and sat down.
“One time, in English class,” he said, smiling, “I learned a very short poem.” It was the only class he ever took, and considering that, he spoke well. “We were asked to write a poem. Everyone wrote in Dari or Pashto, but me, I wrote in English.” His smile widened. “I gave it to a girl.”
“What was it?” I asked.
His eyes turned upward as he searched for it. “It says, ‘Love is hard, love is sweet. With two people, love’s complete.”
I laughed, and a wounded look flashed across his face. “It’s good, it’s good,” I said quickly. And it was. It made my night, that poem. A little humor amidst the ruins on which I tended to focus too much anyway. The childlike rhythm bounced in my feet as I walked home. It was restoration, and the simplicity of it carried me through a menacing blackness, over gaping holes where there was no earth to be found.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Fantastic.
Really nice!