Last Flight From Kabul…

Thank God, it’s the last day/

Of my stay in Kabul today/

Seven months of this hell lived/

Will haunt me for a lifetime/

Scarred by sleepless nights/

Listening to blasts & bullets/

It ends with the last flight from Kabul…

 

Nights of screams & sirens/

Day & night, night & day/

And then deafening silence…

 

I am fleeing to home today/

In search of safety & peace/

Far removed from this city/

The city of the dead living/

Dead in souls, bodies living/

In war-raped human homes…

 

Men, women & children, still/

Have enough blood to spill/

To stain the roads with red/

They die & live day by day/

To be killed another day,,,

 

But I am bound for freedom/

Rushing towards the airport/

I sit in a blue battered pick up/

Driven by a surly bearded man/

With shifty suspicious eyes/

He refuses to take dollars/

The Americans are leaving, he says/

The dollar no more pays…

 

No Pashtun songs play on the streets/

The air smells of stale gunpowder/

The roads are dotted with guards/

& armoured vehicles with guns/

Shanties & makeshift homes/

Faraway, I see smoke rising/

The hidden TVs break the news/

Bomb attack near airport…

 

Thank God, I was running late/

Or I would have been at the site/

By now, lying injured or dead/

One more Indian killed in Kabul,,,

 

I remembered another morning/

When I had walked past the bus stop/

Three minutes after there was a boom/

& the ground shook under my feet/

I went back to see blood soaked bodies/

A girl crying beside her dead mother/

& stunned onlookers crowding around…

 

But here on this street/

A group of scraggy kids/

Are haggling over marbles/

Fighting with bare fists/

A jeep with masked men/

Firing their guns, races past/

The kids are not bothered at all/

They have seen & borne/

More bullets than marbles

In their young lifetimes…

 

I have suffered my horrors full/

I leave this madness behind/

With a prayer for Kabul…