1.Yes, your stories reach usjust as the grit once a summit in our countryreaches you, imperceptiblydusting your upturned faces                           calling on Allah,scanning the indifferent blue skies         armed with helicopters— that iron nightmare politics has builtinto your lives.Our sunsetsintensified by that volcanic ashremind usof your tragedy, your sunsetsbehind villages               in flamesfrom the bombingswhere figures stumbling darkly up from rubblesearch outthe others who do not rise.Stories ofthe unbroken diamond of your resistance.2.Herethose ninespring days are called“The Children's Revolt”—as ifyour children could be children, as ifthe girl fifteen who tore her veil off        and handed itto a soldier Here, give me your riflecould any longer be a childanywhere.3.                                   Or as ifat the head of the column of chanting studentsNahid Saed, first        of the seventy to die that day—thirtyrounds point blank in her body—,  as ifthat daughterwho became the daughter of your landcould turnher ruined faceto answer a father again.4.The stories reach us—How you refuseto attend an unveiling,turning awayfrom a new flag whose bright face isthe old lie of complicity,and of howtroops fire into your faces,Afghan troopsinexplicably your own.Their faces freckle with your blood.5.               Yes, we do hearhow you stone the limousineof the Soviet ambassadoruntil againforeign guns in the hands of your countrymenrespond,able to kill you,                 unableto stop your carrying of the dead and shattered into a high schoolwhere 5,000 students, male and female,answer on the occupied streets of Kabulcrying          Death to Babrak Karmal          Death to Bresnev          Where is America          Are we not human beings6.We hear of that ten-minute slaughter of studentsby machine-gun fire, hear thenthe charge of 2,000 horsemen—swords drawn, electric cattle-prods high,the ancient weapons and the new—into the huddled dead and dying,the screams of horses, and your cries.                                          Finallythere is the low moaning,arms lifting like fronds,the thud of retreating hoovesmuffled by earth trodden to red mud.And we hear of your four more days of resistance.7.We hearhow when the armored unitsurrounding youblazes, you answersimply with your blood until 2,000 morerise up,grab one soldier,stab out his eyes—as if to kill him were too simple,as if to blind him were to eradicate what he has seen.8.And we hearof the puppet show that nightwhen televised officialsdenythose bodiesin whose wet flames of bloodyour handsburn and burnuntil even the blinded soldier must see by their light.9.Yes, all these stories reach usin blocks of black-and-whitewe would hurl backempowered by every mile and lie between usto scourge your nation clean.If wishes were pumice.If words were scouring stones.10.         But all that reaches youfrom usis apolitical ash, proofof an old magnificenceshocked to dust—grit as hardand fineas the skinof a pearl run across the toothof a mujahadeen skillfully determiningits true worth.                       He spitsas he continues to watchthe hammered blue sky and chantsto himselfancient songs from a village turnedin 90 secondsto light and thesmoldering limbs of family and friends,the songs of shepherdsaccustomed to solitudenow being used to keep armed menaware of each other in the high passes.11.Those wornwood crooksyou've managed your flocks withcleverly tendnew herds now—                   Soviet iron-tracksyour scouts lurethrough ravines you seal with boulderspried looseby those staffs.Trappedand terrifiedtoo late, they spattercanon- and machine-gun fire against the indestructible cliffswhere you are hidden, waitingfor the exhausted silenceyou will break with dusty grinsand a calculated avalanche of native stone.12.          Only oncehave I stood on a summithigh as those passesyou guard like wives—ten years ago,while some of you were still childrenplaying among the billowing tentsat hoop-and-shadow games,too shyeven to glance at those with whomyour childrenhave been born and raised.                           We'd driven eastthrough the thinning darknessthose three friends and I,toward dawn and the mountainwe climbed all morning long.        Climbing              we looked backat a world all wilderness,not unlike our own, and at the laketops,each a remotemirror to a bright fragmentof that vastnessno one sees all at once.  ThenI began to comprehendthe Indian comparison ofclimbing the mountainto knowing God, ridge after ridgebeckoning, eacha false summit,                       untilonly the euphoriaof feeling the mountain riseto meet each stepkept us going— past excitementand laughter, wearinessand silence,past each new sense of limitwe imagined to be our last,beyond pumice              to rockface,into snow and ice where the mountain disappearedbelow us, leavingus suspendedhigh on the rim of windfire and ice,able to witness the world as a ringto which our connectionhad vanished.13.                This is the mountain,Fire Mountain,whose summit circles the earth,invisible to the eye where you areexcept as a tint at sunset,grit between your teethand the teeth of your wives and sons and daughters,the teeth of your enemies—this trace of Godhead inconspicuously everywhere.14.Miraculously, overnightthe countryside   so long a familiar nightmare   where crops are routinely burned   so only the stones matureis wonderfully ablaze—littered with glittering firetrucks,          balloons, sticks of chewing gumand, most irresistible of all,little dolls that smile!And every item ingeniouslydetectseven the lightest touch:                                      Ffffoooofffffand magically the handdisappears, the fingersare suddenly stubblecharred as the fields, and the scalpsshed braids of ragged  blood and dust,naked as all the mountain meadows           goats have overgrazed.Ffffoooofff and wonder takes the shape of fire formerly a child             scrambling and billowingin the grass,clawing now              at eyes too intently innocentto suspect the gift               come from nowhere.15.Wouldn't workers somewhere wonderwhy they've been devising toys     that blast, stun, blind then  inextinguishably burnso the last thing some child's eyesever will behold  are      her own handscurling into claws?                              Howcan human hearts so crudely hardenedcontrive nonetheless with a delicacy so meticulous?16.I am a man whose one power is telling.I tell you this:                       I would give you wordsmassive as boulders to roll against tanks and iron-tracks,delicate words to heal the roses drivenby dumdum shells into your flesh,words of silk and gut to restore each maimed limbfrom the truckload of arms and legshacked off in a single villageand dumped in a square in Kabul,words to re-root tonguestorn from the mouthsof those who warned you,milk-words rich and white for the myriad infants     held to shrunken breasts of mothersstarving in Kohat and dozens of campsthousands flee to over Parachinar Passthrough the Speen Ghar Mountains.17.                       —I would give youwind-words to dispel the experimental gasses                                  of Soviet advisors,to disperse the yellow rain and scatter      mists of blue and greendust,each composedto destroy in another waythe frail machinery of the human body,hearts and minds betrayed by their own blood.18.                       —I would give youhealing words to mend the lungs and shorted nervesand bursting veinsof the hundreds, the thousandsof you who fall gasping and hacking up sudden bloodwith your nose-blood gagging youand ear-blood hot along your necks,anus-blood and manroot-blood scalding your legs      to your boots and bare feet,eye-blood blinding you as you look upto take aim.                       —I would give youheat-seeking words to bring down the observers taking                   notes in helicopters circling overheadtimingon stop-watcheswith Cyrillic numeralshow long it takes beforeyou with your muzzle-loadersand your women and children with slingshots and rockscollapse, thenhow much longer it takes you to stop writhing altogetheron sodden ground among the unscathed huts.19.LastlyI would draw            from Nahid Saedthe thirty traitorous pieces of leadand give them to herfor charms.  To the eyesof your womenraped like the land, helplessly shamedby the violence of menwhose shadows dark as vulturesseed the valley with fire and char,I would restorethe brilliance and tendernesstoward you,toward themselves.  Toward your children.If words were scouring stones.If wishes were pumice.20.With the stone of helplessnesshuge under my tongue,I tell you your story is heard.Your story is being heard.