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…
