The Peace Poets Write From Kabul

Luke Nephew Countercurrents October 14, 2013
The flight from Dubai to Kabul:
It’s a flight full of Afghan people and soldiers. And me. And surely a handful of other curious characters. The tension is palpable in the waiting area by the gate. Eye contact between the warring parties is avoided let alone any dialogue. I think about the time when we were in the Bahrain airport where all men and woman sit in different waiting areas and I took out the guitar and played Akon’s ‘Ain’t nobody wanna see us together but it don’t matter no, because we gonna fight, yah we gonna fight, fight for our right to love.’ Against all odds that went over great, this particular moment however just didn’t feel like it was asking for a song. But then as the bus brought us across the runway to board the plane, an American soldier helped an Afghan family carry their bags up the stairs and store them above their seats. The other people watched with quiet suspicion. That’s what it is I think, as I sit myself down in the middle seat between two Afghan men, it’s a deep dark sense of distrust. Distrust dangerous ground to build anything on, let alone a country, much less nine military bases or a prison like the one at Bagram Air Force Base outside Kabul where people are kept without charges for months or years. Very dangerous ground. The plane shutters itself awake and rolls out onto the runway. The lights go off. The babies seem to all break the silence in unison. Some of us don’t have the option of distrust they cry. Their wailing for food or sleep or to be held sounds so beautiful to me in the harsh air of the old plane. ‘Where are we going?’ they seem to be asking……
There was someone there waiting for me. They just weren’t sure who I was. I stood there for a few minutes and then I noticed three guys wearing matching blue scarfs. Ahh yes, the color of the Afghan Peace Volunteers. I met eyes with one of the young men. He raised his eyebrows, took a step forward and said, ‘Luke?’ Yes. My peoples. It turned out they saw the website and something in the communication at some point made them think that out of the five Peace Poets, there we’re expecting the big dark skinned one with locks. So when I rolled through the parking lot, not even my bright Bolivian guitar case was enough of a reason for them to assume I might be the peace poet. But, eye contact and instincts are lifesavers. So Dr. Hakim, an amazing peace activist and medical doctor who lives and works with the community of Afghan youth, flashed his brilliant smile and it was big hugs all around. Abdulhai and Raz Mohammed were the youth from the community who had made the early morning trip to the airport with Hakim to pick me up. Good to be together, we hop in a cab and into the streets of Kabul…….

Remembering 12 years of war,
The streets of Kabul beg in the dust,
Distrust and revenge a city, a country, a people condemned
After 12 years of war, some estimate 78% of Afghans have psychological disorders, the taxi driver says its more, says we Afghans can’t think right anymore, he shows us scars on his knees from the day he almost died, he sighs, ‘so many stories of pain…
But who are we to say we’re sane? When we remain entrenched after 12 years of war? I dare you to come here and still say you want more?
Another day, another year, then leaving 9 military bases here,
America has smashed the windows of people’s sanity,
People are demanding we leave, nobody wants to hear Obama make a pretty speech
In Kabul I’ve see anger rise like armies
in young men’s eyes that say you have harmed me and my family for the last time,
I wanna know what will be the last crime committed in the name of freedom,
more marines relieving themselves on corpses of murdered kids,
12 years of blood that did not have to get spilled,
12 years of mothers gone mad from mourning, what have we become?
Afghanistan is a nation of American made guns and American made widows,
Hearts crumbling like bombed out windowsills
Wondering where they’ll find the will to teach their son not to kill
When inflicting death is the lesson they’ve best learned from us,
12 years of dust on boots and the truth being covered in mud,
But what will we do now…
Are we hoping a nation of 30 million will forgive and forget, would you let it go if an occupying army broke into your house killed your father and didn’t even say sorry, or admit it was a mistake, how many more years will it take Americans to wake up and say I will not live in debt while my government pays millions of dollars a day to make people hate me for my passport, want to cut my life short for my birth country’s flag, 12 years of war and not enough body bags to hold the soldiers, not enough words to say the funeral masses, not enough mass graves to hold the lives that 12 years of wartime has taken,
and when I ask a young Afghan woman named Zuhal, why she wants an end to the occupation,
She says, ‘12 years of war is too many, it’s time for the soldiers to go home to their families. They must miss them.’
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