Afghan Widows

Two sides of a picture:

This is a reply to the poem, Occupation, by Eliza Griswold



Afghan Widows
by mazHur

Everything is possible in war
but love;
the looming eagles wouldn't spare
the dove.

For a loaf of bread or fifteen cents
will sell
the helpless widows that men turn out
in this hell.

No choice but to die or to live
for their orphan kids
Bare hands, bare feet, bare body,
life on skids.

Amazed not be at the sex they sell
for their survival,
for more or less, where isn't it sold,
can anyone tell?

As long as the bigger fish sport
the oceans blue,
how can the smaller fish feel safe,
to be true.

The dichotomy of the occupiers
and the occupied
makes whores out of women unless
they'd died.

Weigh not the worth of a woman
from her constraints,
men, yes men, spoil the picture
which God paints.

------------ --------- oOo------ --------- --------- --------- -

Occupation

by Eliza Griswold

The prostitutes in Kabul tap their feet
beneath their faded burqas in the heat.

For bread or fifteen cents, they'll take a man to bed
their husbands dead, their seven kids unfed

and thanks to occupation, rents have risen twentyfold,
their chickens, pots and carpets have been sold.

Two years ago, the Talibs favored boys and left the girls alone.
A woman then was worth her weight in stone.

"Occupation" by Eliza Griswold, from Wideawake Field. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.