Mazar

March 15
After spending two days in Afghan airports, we arrive in Mazar on Sunday on the second try. Baggage claim vies with Herat for most primitive-all rock and sand and one must walk at least a mile to reach the taxis though there is a sidewalk for part of the way! (imagine a sidewalk in the middle of a moonscape)

Mazar is like an armed camp. I haven't left the hotel since I arrived (most of you know this isn't like me). This week is the Afghan New Year and here is where all Afghans like to spend it: the city of 300,000 becomes one million.

Yesterday was the first day of my women's writing workshop. Diana and Malik accompany one of the writers, Sada, a famous Afghan poet. They are making a film about remarkable women in Afghanistan. I am teaching the students to write a monologue and as an example, I read one written by my American University student, T, about the protest of the Shia Law signed by Karzai (see blog entry for March 2009). Diana, the filmmaker, is the one who organized the protest.

Eight more women come to today's workshop but only to tell me they cannot continue; people will speak disapprovingly of women entering a hotel. They ask me to come to them. But I had decided I wouldn't leave the hotel for above reason. I tell them yes.

They are mostly poets and ask me to read one of mine. Only one coincidentally comes to mind that I have memorized. (If Afghanistan has a national fruit , it is pomegranates):

Maria Elena Cruz Varela (a Cuban poet jailed by Castro)

Boxes of fruit hoarded away.
How can fruit be hoarded?
It will rot.

I have never eaten pomegranates.
I don’t know if I like their taste but
Yes I like their ripe red color ,
their seeds enfolded in slippery purple.

How do I know this Maria Elena Cruz Varela?
Your name is like pomegranates
Ruby ripe red
Your words are seeds of life
hoarded away, allowed to rot
My tears are purple envelopes
holding the seeds of dreams slipping away.

When my grandma was alive,
we didn't hoard fruit.
We gave it away.