From Kabul to Baghdad to Damascus | The Avenue of Dolphins
The vineyards are bursting with grapes, yet
they’re visited only by ghosts.
From Kabul to Baghdad to Damascus
For Sadiq Muhammad, Iraqi Poet
From Kabul, to Bagdad, to Damascus,
the dead abound
with countless blisters on their feet,
and the heartbeat of their children
in their ears.
The flames of war have licked
the Hindu Kush peaks; Tigris and Euphrates
are now boiling vats.
Wings of angels burn in the Golan Heights.
Friends!
I steel my heart when I see
a suckling babe bite his mother’s breast
to stay alive, or when women
carry their pregnant bellies
across burning desert sands,
or when dogs search for their masters
tracing blood through the streets.
Our homeland has a sweet breeze, yet
generation after generation has only felt
its cold chill in the fluttering flags
planted above graves.
The vineyards are bursting with grapes, yet
they’re visited only by ghosts.
In Kabul, at the end of each week,
the dead carry the living to the cemeteries.
When the stench of the mourners’ wounds
permeates the air…
the sight of a roadside’s white roses
draws tears from every eye;
the scent of jujube blossoms
brings tears to all.
Like you, I saw flames leaping
in my sister’s eyes,
and searched countless hospitals
to hear my brother’s last heartbeats.
We saw how they pulled
bullet-ridden children out from under
Aleppo’s rubble and how quickly
tears dried up in the world’s eyes.
Friends, we saw everything.
saw how on the shores of the Mediterranean
they loaded paper boats with the children
of Kabul, Bagdad, and Damascus.
Tonight, our people sleep side by side
on the ocean floor, gazing up
at the pale, distant stars.
The Avenue of Dolphins
How I wish the sea would come
visit the streets of Kabul and bring
all its fish, no matter what their color.
How I wish the sea would rebel and divert
its dolphins to our street, so that
it becomes the Avenue of Dolphins.
How I wish a big sea would rush
into the streets of Kabul and force
the warlords to swim away.
How I wish the city of Kabul would sink
with the years and all the dams would go under
and seaweed would grow between tanks,
hang from the house’s tall windows,
and dance among restaurants’ tables and chairs
in our submerged neighborhood.
How I wish from the very beginning
of our ancient past schools of small
playful fish zipped in and out of our windows.
How I wish our sisters were mermaids
and dolphins bore children
instead of our mothers.
“The Avenue of Dolphins” was first published as “The Street of Dolphins” in MAYDAY (October 31, 2022).
Image by Antonio Carrau.
Mujib Mehrdad is an Afghan poet, translator, and journalist. In 2021, his most recent collection of poetry, کوچه دلفینها (The Avenue of Dolphins), won the prestigious Ahmad Shamlou Poetry Award for best collection of the year in Tehran, Iran. He is presently a research scholar at Florida Atlantic University through the Scholars at Risk Network, an NGO that arranges for universities in North America and Europe to host threatened scholars from around the globe.
Sholeh Wolpé is a poet, editor, and literary translator. A recipient of the 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation Prize, Sholeh is the author of three collections of poetry and three books of translations, and is the editor of three anthologies. Her latest book, a modern translation of Conference of the Birds by Attar, the twelfth-century Iranian mystic poet, will be released by W. W. Norton in 2017.
