A Prayer
Dear Everyone,
I fasted for a day after sending update #10. I was concerned that my words would cause harm, and I was concerned with the rifts I saw growing in the team here in Faizabad. The past three days have been like an episode of Survivor, little conversations going on everywhere, who is allied to who. I wish there was an immunity challenge I could win. Anyway, the day after the fast, I woke up and began writing, and as I wrote I was overwhelmed with sobs, really deep feelings and I wasn't even sure where they all were coming from. Now I think that my spirit was crying for Afghanistan, for God in Afghanistan, for God in Afghanistan with me. So here is what I wrote, a prayer for this country.
"Oh my God, I miss my old home in Taloqan, I miss my home in Canada. But I am home anywhere if you are where I am. You are in my memory of the ocean crashing, lulling me to sleep, you are in the cold winds that play around mountain peaks. You are with the children here, chasing metal hoops down the streets in the morning, with the children flying plastic bag kites, running along the rooftops...
You are with the fierce men on their horses, the flocks of women in billowing burqas, and with the men bent double under their loads, choking on dust, aging before they are old. You are with the little girls on the streets, washing in the gutter, sitting by the side of the road, smeared in dirt. You are here, holding the hand of the little ones, racked with fever, coughing to death in a thousand forgotten, crumbling, windowless rooms.
You stand on the hills with the goatherds, you look over the flooding plains, over the dust storms, over the hills engraved with furrows, and the fields full of stones. You see the land ruined by bombs and ambition, the skeletons of war, the mines hidden where children play. You run with the wild donkeys, you keep the company of eagles, you are hidden with the snow leopard in his home, invisible.
You are in heaven and you are here, among us, crowding into taxis, walking through the bazaar and the narrow streets with us, stepping over the gutters, avoiding the cars. You see the short lives of children, the boy with the twisted foot and his loping run, the simple and the tormented. You are behind the veil of the hidden women and you see what is done to them behind the walls.
You see the mullah walking in his wealthy display, parting the fearful crowd. You see the warlords with their armies; you see their wives and gardens and their people who live in the dust with their fear.
This is the world you have made, and we have made - though it is we who have brought it so far from heaven. We are our own undoing, and still you are here, walking among the undone, preserving beauty in the places we cannot touch and ruin, restoring life where we would have forgotten it.
You still dance on the rooftops of Afghanistan, and the children run after you with kites and bright clothes and ageless laughter. Amaze the world, my king, and when I am a child again I will run with them..."
rjs
I fasted for a day after sending update #10. I was concerned that my words would cause harm, and I was concerned with the rifts I saw growing in the team here in Faizabad. The past three days have been like an episode of Survivor, little conversations going on everywhere, who is allied to who. I wish there was an immunity challenge I could win. Anyway, the day after the fast, I woke up and began writing, and as I wrote I was overwhelmed with sobs, really deep feelings and I wasn't even sure where they all were coming from. Now I think that my spirit was crying for Afghanistan, for God in Afghanistan, for God in Afghanistan with me. So here is what I wrote, a prayer for this country.
"Oh my God, I miss my old home in Taloqan, I miss my home in Canada. But I am home anywhere if you are where I am. You are in my memory of the ocean crashing, lulling me to sleep, you are in the cold winds that play around mountain peaks. You are with the children here, chasing metal hoops down the streets in the morning, with the children flying plastic bag kites, running along the rooftops...
You are with the fierce men on their horses, the flocks of women in billowing burqas, and with the men bent double under their loads, choking on dust, aging before they are old. You are with the little girls on the streets, washing in the gutter, sitting by the side of the road, smeared in dirt. You are here, holding the hand of the little ones, racked with fever, coughing to death in a thousand forgotten, crumbling, windowless rooms.
You stand on the hills with the goatherds, you look over the flooding plains, over the dust storms, over the hills engraved with furrows, and the fields full of stones. You see the land ruined by bombs and ambition, the skeletons of war, the mines hidden where children play. You run with the wild donkeys, you keep the company of eagles, you are hidden with the snow leopard in his home, invisible.
You are in heaven and you are here, among us, crowding into taxis, walking through the bazaar and the narrow streets with us, stepping over the gutters, avoiding the cars. You see the short lives of children, the boy with the twisted foot and his loping run, the simple and the tormented. You are behind the veil of the hidden women and you see what is done to them behind the walls.
You see the mullah walking in his wealthy display, parting the fearful crowd. You see the warlords with their armies; you see their wives and gardens and their people who live in the dust with their fear.
This is the world you have made, and we have made - though it is we who have brought it so far from heaven. We are our own undoing, and still you are here, walking among the undone, preserving beauty in the places we cannot touch and ruin, restoring life where we would have forgotten it.
You still dance on the rooftops of Afghanistan, and the children run after you with kites and bright clothes and ageless laughter. Amaze the world, my king, and when I am a child again I will run with them..."
rjs
posted by rjs | 4:04 PM
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