[The long poem "Halekon" was written in the early 2000s as a response to the United States war in/with Afghanistan. Many of the details are factual (Taliban children did learn to count with weaponry flashcards), but the speaker and his story are entirely imaginary. (Adult Content)]
HALEKON
afghan pushtun name for
“beautiful boys”
i
The commander has new French boots
New American fatigues. He strides
Through the town’s old streets
With a new heart.
The road to the commander’s house is the color
Of drought. His porch,
Of the river. Made of river
Stones—solid brown turbulence.
Family rugs float,
Rafts at prayer-call.
The room where we meet,
Commander and halekon, is night
Color, color of nothing, and no color
Names what we do there. Shame
Is our pleasure, but where’s the shame
In pleasing if I must?
ii
Come with me
To the desert, where dust seethes
In every blanket fold.
Come with me
To the crags of the mountain,
A hollow known but hidden,
Where the wind will not stir
Our bed.
Come with me, orphan,
And be my pleasure.
Father—martyr
Mother—widow
—and you?
Come with me
For new boots, a radio—
Forbidden trinket
—Sacks of grain.
Before I heard him,
I was a child.
Before I went with him,
I was halekon in his eyes.
Before I returned from him,
I was halekon in mine.
iii
God gifts
The halekon:
Fire,
Air,
Earth.
The stake.
The cliff.
The wall.
iv
The commander has a wife.
Not in this house.
Soldiers billet in the other rooms,
No place for women.
Weeks descend from heaven
And pass their time on earth
Without a softer face.
Until my mother’s, her eyes only
And only reluctantly
—No wonder then
Women are blue ghosts.
v
They pushed the wall on the sinner who loved,
A tank for God’s hand,
A crowd for His eye.
They said he was Abomination.
They said they were God’s Will.
They said prayers and
Guided the heavy treads,
And the sound was not Divine
Thunder but dishes
Breaking. A village
Of shattered crockery.
They stood and watched,
Arms looped, hand-in-hand,
Embracing. Some also lovers,
Some of them halekon. I
Didn’t go, didn’t see.
They pushed, but they could
Also fall. Now, under new law,
Someone has put up a shop
Over the grave wall. Songbirds
In rows of cages sing. Throats fill
With strings of silver bells.
Copper-copper-silver,
Silver-silver-bell.
vi
I wait for him in the Night Room.
In the Night Room where songbirds
Sleep in cages of blue metal,
I wait. In the Night Room
Without windows, I wait
For him. I wait and I bar
My eyes with black stick.
Black around black eyes
Above white cheeks, I watch
In the piece of glass beside
The bed. I wait in the Night
Room and dip my fingers
In the henna pot and rub
Spice between my palms. Night
In the room and in the air
Outside, he never waits.
The man he sends ahead to open
The door waits. The room waits
As I sit inside. The boy inside
The Night Room, the night around
The soldier at the door,
We know we are to wait,
This waiting now with a sharper
Keenness from the waiting
We endured before.
vii
Your fate is bitter
On my tongue, my mother
Says, lifting
A ten-pound sack of
Flour from my arms.
I will beg for coins
In the market, she says:
All she could do as
A woman—blue
Husbandless ghost.
When you are old enough
To marry, she says,
I will go ask at your uncle’s
House, your aunt’s sister’s
Daughter, a suitable bride.
viii
Almonds scent
The commander’s house.
Brown almonds,
A pool of shut eyes,
In a bowl by the tea things.
Another bowl, of dates.
Almonds.
Dust.
The commander’s soap
For shaving (he keeps
A clean chin now).
Oiled rags
From greasing
And polishing
The guns.
Little root. He lifts
His wet, heavy lips off
My penis. Such sweet,
Sharp sap. And this moss.
He swipes fingers across
My sparse curls. Who knows
What fine timber may
Rise. He laughs, chasing tongue,
And I come. Slippery gusher.
Who can say what is wrong
—More wrong—when he loves
Me there? When this whole bowl
Of sweets is forbidden,
Who can say which treat
Poison favors most?
Still, he has his qualms, his
Voice tired at my ear, Don’t
Tell, don’t tell. As if
This were all I shouldn’t say.
His voice, reptile scales
On rock. Don’t tell. Scent of
Shaving soap, bitter breath
Of tea and almonds. Of me.
ix
1— The commander topples me under a wall of petals mortared with crushed spice.
2— He turns me on my stomach, bears down with his full weight. But where there was a bed,
now there is open sky. I fall free.
3— Because I must not love him, I burn. My fuel: my own flesh.
x
The commander’s voice
Is the bullet clip,
A volley of fired rounds
Through empty passes
With nothing to do
But echo.
His echo
In my head is honey,
Murmur of bees busy
At the flowers. Oranges
Crushed to pulp and
Sweet juice.
In dreamtongue
He says to them—
I will marry him,
This boy of fourteen years.
My love for him is sweeter
Than my wife’s caress,
Sweeter than a warrior’s victory.
On his lips, I will place my kiss,
At his loins, my seed,
On his shoulders, my legacy.
Precious halekon, sweet balm
To an old man’s heart.
xi
When I was taught to count
We were shown pictures of guns:
6 rifles
7 rifles
13 rifles in an arsenal.
They have replaced the guns
With pomegranates:
5 fruit
4 fruit
And inside their shrivelling husks,
Crimson multitudes.
In the untended kitchen they sit,
Last year’s crop, like children’s heads
On beds of straw.
If I took one,
1 pomegranate,
Would he know the count,
Make the subtraction?
xii
The soldiers stir about,
Birds on a ledge,
Wagering on anything.
How many cars through
The checkpoint,
How many hours until
New orders come.
Someone has eggs
Dyed hardboiled red.
Pomegranate.
Fire coal.
Blood.
They bet.
They butt egg tips,
And whose will crack?
Hey, boy!
One grabs my sleeve
As I am returning
From my mother.
How much that his will break?
Another soldier frowns.
Commander’s halekon,
Says his darting eye.
No blue All-Veil,
But I, unlike red eggs,
Must not be gambled.
xiii
They lifted the stones from the sinner who loved.
He lived, God’s Will, and they carried him
Into prison where the walls
Stood still.
They raked the ashes of the sinners.
Their bones had mingled. The hardest
Shards of each man
Married by flame.
The commander hoisted me above my sin
On promises. My white limbs
Cold in starlight,
Stretched into wings.
xiv
The wisest and holiest have beards
Like valleys: arid, grey
With rivulets of brown.
Like sky: black cloud
And white lightning’s tracings.
The soldiers now shave
Close. Moustache cancelling
Upper lip. Or else as clean
As the commander. European
Style, his barber claims.
And my beard veils
The future’s face. Death
To the halekon. One hair
Kinked at my cheek. Dark as
Night curling from my skin.
xv
Home
Mother folds flour sacks, sighs,
Work is plenty
In the city.
Roads
River with traffic, truck tires,
Cracking boots of former
Halekon.
Jobs
Poured out by governors, by
Banks, by commanders,
Shimmer and dry.
Love
Like any promise tendered
With old currency, loses value
In the new.
Clouds
And stars, when we have
Nothing. Day and night,
Always clouds and stars
To count.