By Farhad Azad
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The old man sat by the cracked window in his dilapidated apartment
looking outside the filthy, dusty street below. The humid, polluted
air of Peshawar made him fall in a deep daze.
His thoughts ran wild. He saw himself under the clear blue skies of Paghman, in his vineyard. He saw his life, the early and later years. He saw his late wife in her youth, when they met under Gol Bibi's cherry tree. He saw the birth of his three daughters and son. He saw with horror as the Red Army burnt his vineyard. He saw his only son killed before his eyes by the "freedom fighters" because his son wouldn't give them the little money he had in his pockets. He pictured the day his youngest daughter was savagely beaten in the streets because she did not wear the veil to cover her face. He saw the day he and his family fled their home, their native Paghman and became refugees, prisoners in this dirty city. He dreamt of the day that he could return and the days that he spent in peace. He now saw his reflection on the shattered glass of the window. He saw an aged broken man that had lost everything and gained nothing but marks of pain etched on his cracked face. Tears fell from his blue eyes. |
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