My good friend, Fareed, was born in Afghanistan. As a young boy his family fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Fareed has returned numerous times to Afghanistan since 2001; in a variety of roles, all attempts to heal, both himself and his country. He wrote me this poem and sent it to me over the weekend:

Dead eyes in a live face

An orchard

Men

Women

Children

Playing

A garden of Eden

What sadness reflects in

Those once sunny eyes

back at

Our souls!

 

Who knew we would feel

Twenty thousand leagues

Under the sea of our souls

move within us

Telling us to hide our faces

And cry out to Zion

These orchard dwellers

In the garden

Of our Eden

They are us

And we are them.