BIKE RIDE INTO THE TWI LIGHT

Went for a bike ride
into the twi light
on the dusty road
south westwards
out of Kabul
towards the mountains so oh so
white
passed the pushcart shops
their owners sitting huddled-up in the corner of the
counter between peanuts chewing gum tobacco sweet bread and chili
the ministries and Pakistan style palaces
behind scarred war-wounded walls and the armed guards who
are the plural in this ruin
of a city
outnumbering
the peasants
the push-cart pushers
the bakers crouching in six-packs on theirs stoves behind greasy windows
the six year old girls carrying brushwood on their backs along Darulaman Road
the mechanics painted black in oil head-down into a once-was-a-motor in the shade of their rusty shotgun shacks
the native and illiterate and chewing-gum-chewing drivers of UN-cars carrying towering antennas as radiator mascots
the shepherds driving their flock into the dustwhirling hell of a traffic of third hand yellow cabs, Toyota trucks, Hazarian bike riders on Chinese bikes, Tadjikis on horsebacks, and piebald cows rolling still upright ahead on truck backs, human barrows and barrows ever so human collapsing under tons of firewood, sheepskins, bricks and brac, Afghan apples and Pakistan cauliflowers the size of a parasol, broken, burned or exploded metal tres tres fatigue, barrels of vegetable oil, naked steaming meat from cows sheep goats hens or maybe a human
man
like me
alone
here
arriving at the gate of the palace
“ISAF & Canadian Military Compound” but
except from that
the most melancholic and wounded and grey-brown and but still ever so proud towering
End of History
I ever saw