Samay Hamed 9 11 children

My good friend Samay Hamed sent me his most recent poem about 9/11. It is well-composed and evocative.


I wish a small rainbow of a kite
From a burnt roof in Kabul
Could fly to New York... Read More
And a colorful bird in a drawing pad page
From an orphanage room in New York
Could fly to Kabul
So children of 911 both here and there
Could understan...d
There are no just suicide bombers in Afghanistan
There are no just politicians in the US
There are children who play and dream
Of a free and fresh future
They could understand each other
And
They will meet each other as tourists
Not as soldiers

the Afghan Woman and other poems by Samay Hamed

Afghan women outside the Mosque in Mazar-I-Sharif. Taken 1976. Photo: Bob McKerrow

I will never forget that snowy winter in Mazar I Sharif, Northern Afghanistan. in 1993- 94 when I met Waheed and his brother Samay Hamed. Waheed was a scrawny 17 year old who had learnt some BBC English. The killing in Kabul had reached hundreds a day and as various factions fought, people fled to Mazar-I-Sharif for sanctury wher ethere was relative peace. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people needed assistance from the Red Cross, so I moved their to increase the volume of our humanitarian assistance.

I employed Waheed as an interpretor and his brother Samay Hamed worked as a Doctor for the Afghan red Crescent Society.

When I published my book of poems and photographs in 2003, Mountains of Our Mind, I included 12 of (Abdul) Samay Hamed's poems. Since then he has gone on to be one of Afghanistan's leading poets.

The other day Samay Hamed wrote to me and shared me his lates poems. He is happy for me to share them with you.


Can I see what I wish?

I see my mother watching my gritty grave
on this grizzly ground
She is pouring tears and water into the broken pot
for the desert-pigeons

I can even sense the fragrance of her face
The fragrance of her old cloth - flowered
with colorful patches-

I see my father selling left-over parts of the mortar-shell
to the iron-peddler to buy a nipple
for my month-old sister

I see my brother making bricks from dust and sweat
to rebuild our house
He is making, too, a big brick for my grave
to prevent whirlwinds destroying my silence

From this gritty grave on this grizzly ground

I can feel my playmate chewing a fresh leaf,
riding on a wooden horse

I see our neighbors praying for my little soul
while she crosses the singing bridge

I see every one in the violet face of our village
after violence

But

Can I ever see my month-old sister
sitting with my mother on the roof of our home,
inviting small birds to a morning snack?

With not a single bullet to interrupt them?

Can I?


The Afghan Woman

The Afghan woman in a blue veil
looks like a piece of sky torn off and fallen
on the smoking street
she is trying to rise again
but it seems that a wave is frozen
The Afghan woman,

When she reaches her hand out from her cloth-cell to
to sell a chewing-gum
Several small and colorful rainbows
dance round her wrist

The Afghan woman
hides her love in the shoes she has never worn
Pays her father’s debt with her virgin dreams
Tells her problems to a cloudy mirror
in the dark corner of a basement

The Afghan woman
Is cooking
Waving
Sewing
Cleaning
Washing
Watching
Nursing
But still not working!

A baby on her left arm
A teenage boy in her right hand
She is running faster then machineguns

and

The bridge is crossing the Afghan woman!





The Mosque in Balkh, near Mazar-I-Sharif. Photo: Bob McKerrow









Ouch! Telephone cards!

The orphan boy is shouting from his shirt
of dust and smoke:
Telephone cards! Telephone cards!
He runs after the sleepless cars
He follows the waving baskets of grapes
He stands in front of a shop
full of perfume and shooting stars
The shopkeeper hits at him with a fly-swat

Ouch! Telephone cards! Telephone cards!

Since he was 5 years old
he has been selling hundreds of telephone cards

But his own second-hand mobile had never rung!


We have to believe

The black and white film of the night
is always the same here
Just its red burning subtitles change

Sometimes they change so horribly that you want
to write under the window :

Minus 18-years old!

It is difficult, but we have to believe
there is a lover plying guitar with her/his
blood-lightings behind this wall

It is difficult, but we have to believe
this sky, covered by red full-stops of bullets
Will turn to a poetry collection of galaxies again

The window will open us towards the fresh breath
of hidden forests
The door will welcome sunny smiles

It is difficult, but we have to believe
a silken child is opening the cage of our bones
to emerge like a free-form Haiku

To translate us for ourselves

In spite of our difficulties we must believe

Samay Hamed (l) and Waheed Warastra (r)

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