Dislocations
Bronwyn Winter

Peshawar 2000
We are in a Sikh palace in the old city
Renovated and priced for tourists by Americans
Its carved arches handrails balconies
Polished to perfection.  Starshaped windows
The signature image of a forgotten affluence
Intricate lampshades ripple the walls with light
The damp sewage smell from the bathrooms
The only reminder of when and where we are
We are in a street of Sikh palaces
Washing draped over rotting wood sagging walls
Electric wires like the branches of wintertrees
Shutters missing slats, corrugated iron doing the rest
Bright painted signs beneath star windows
Ghazal Paints, Brother’s Pharmacy
Not owned by Americans
But translated for them
It is the end of the kite festival
Shreds of kite caught on the wintertree wiring
Flutter on occasion in the halfhearted March breeze
Yesterday, boys flew kites from the roofs
Colour and movement against the stagnancy of years
I did not see the girls
Peshawar carries its traditions well
Incongruous in local dress with Blundstone boots
Seated in a carvedwoodenchair in our palacefortourists
You stare half-bored, half-defiant from a photograph
How peculiar we are in this place
One morning from the balcony
We watch the town pass in bright painted buses
And draped in folds of heavy cotton
A woman wearing her portable tent
Looks up and waves.  I imagine her smile
In three days I count six bareheaded little girls
The rest already playing at grownups
Walking through the bazaar
Jostled by men, avoided by women
We are offensive in our foreign femaleness
Some stare at us through the grilles of their tents
I imagine their eyes
In the hotel restaurant I eat Afghan food
And imagine the camps
Impossible not to feel like a fraud
Tasting the daytoday of others
And I know I can leave tomorrow
On the outskirts of the old city
The Hindu temple weeps
An abandoned car has settled in
In front of the abandoned temple
Ancient and modern obsolescence in beige and brown
This is an unpeopled place
A place to traverse quickly, a shortcut from there to there
Atop the crumbling ramparts of the old fortress
Homes of sticks and canvas and barbed wire
A television antenna perched on a treebranch
Stakes a claim to modern luxuries
This urban wasteland like so many others
Variations on a theme of dilapidation
In the central bazaar
Where gold jewellery and cameras
Glisten in glassed shopfronts
The mosque shines whitewhitewhite
Beautiful and loved
Beautiful because loved
I did not see the camps
What business had I there
Even a refugee deserves privacy
This was Before The War
Before The World Changed
Before New York realised It Too was Vulnerable
Before People Were Killed
Women were only women then
Not yet needed to salve consciences
Imagined faces beneath ambulatory tents
A breath, a whisper amidst the cacophony
Of more pressing concerns elswhere
Kabul 2002
Kabul seizes your eyes your throat
Hangs heavy in the air
The mountains a vague background suggestion
Los Angeles on a bad day
Minus Venice Beach and Santa Monica
Kabul invades your nostrils
Heat dust petrol daysold oil
Sides of meat in the market buzzing with flies
The runoff dries and cakes in the gutters
Kabul smells of Peshawar
Kabul wakes you at 4am
The discordant stridency of busy dawn cars
Frenetically bound around a roundabout
The policeman parasol-protected
Against the sun heat dust no rain tospeakof
Blows his whistle on occasion
As the cars buzzbuzzbuzz like flies
Kabul greets you with destruction
Plane carcasses lined up along the runway
Ghosts of military welcomes past
Bombed out hangars house bombed out planes
Office buildings conduct business as usual
Next to gaping holes in their façades
Kabul marks its memories
In the middle of the main bazaar
An embarassed and cloaked-in central square
A former Taliban place of execution
We photograph the landmarks
“The Taliban soldiers were here”  CLICK
“The United Front shot from here” CLICK
In between, a street full of saplings
Newly cut timber for rebuilding
Kabul teaches its children
In halfremaining rooms
Tarpaulins make up the difference
UN protection from the June sun
Classroom posters show the alphabet numbers landmines
The basics of Afghan literacy
The girls proudly recite their lesson
“The value of sharing water”
And jostle to smile for our cameras
The teachers invite us for tea
Later under their burqas
Screens muffling their voices their eyes
I remember their smiles
Kabul drinks tea
Delicate with cardamom
And the warmth of gentle hospitality
Incongruous and optimistic
Like the womenandgirls smiles
In this bleak and savage place
Kabul goes about its business
Salwar kameez driving donkeys
And burqas towing children
One day things will be better
In the meantime we have to eat
Parwan
Shamari stretches in the sun
The highway a red-dotted line to the Kush
Red for landmines
Remnants of villages, ghost towns elsewhere,
Less romantic here, they are Ruins Remains Rubble
The tanks are everywhere
Lined up along the highway
Like the planes along the runway
But the planes were orderly
Corpses laid out after battle
The tanks are everywhichway
Caught in suspended animation
But Afghanistan Is Rebuilding
Spanking new petrol stations
Smile at passing cars vans trucks
Prettily painted, almostready for customers
Gleaming new mosques
Dazzling in the midday heat
Prettily painted alwaysready for customers
Transport and religion
Priorities for national reconstruction
The women teach the value of sharing water
And the children memorise written words
No books to write in or pencils to write with
Water and words are precious things
To be savoured relished devoured
But only in moderation
While the men guzzle petrol and prayer
Water and words are precious
The children collect words like jewels
Their mothers stumble over the letters
And dream of becoming seamstresses
Panjshir
The road turns to rubble
And the mountains become visible
The rapids rush brown over rock
Heady excitement of leftalone wildness
Climbing high rounding rock water rock
A tank perched impossibly on an outcrop
Like some alien spaceship
Abandoned to an earthly fate
Abandon abandoned abandonment
Words to characterise a country
The Panjshir villages huddle in the valleys
They have managed to stay in hiding
Put their heads down until the battlefire passed
One survives how one can
I saw Massoud’s house
Opulence and running water
Next to the running river
I saw Massoud’s grave
A killer killed becomes a martyr
A Protector of the People
I shudder in the summer afternoon
Driving home after nightfall
An injured tank points its gun
Directly into our headlights
Sudden and frightening in the Panjshir moonscape
Peshawar 2002
It takes time to cross University Road
No such thing as a break in the traffic
Men lean out leering from buses
Rickshaws and taxis slow enquiringly
Their drivers incredulous to be waved away
A lone western woman crossing the road
Is not a concept here
Westerners ride in taxis rickshaws 4wheeldrives
And women do not venture alone
Through the streets of Peshawar
Peshawar is not a safe place
In pairs trios with children
The women are never alone
But always isolated
Covered heads faces bodies
The women are never invisible
But always anonymous
Threading through the marketplace
The women are never still
But always constrained
Bonded jailed burqaed
Bosses police landlords husbands children
Everyone stakes a claim gets a cut
Peshawar is not a gentle place
In the backstreets of University Town
The traffic thins people disappear
Into the grounds of whitewalled residences
As pristine as Pakistan gets
The trees gardens 4wheeldrives
Clumps of beggars at gateways
Universal giveaways of a city’s rarefied space
Where bourgeoisie meets NGOs and UN
Peshawar’s protected places
Those who liveandwork here are nervous
On Friday a carbomb in Karachi
Pedestrians unlucky enough
To be near something American
Already on Thursday a danger warning
Stay within University Town
Unless Absolutely Necessary
I do not stay in University Town
In the dusty lateafternoon
The city stirs from hot stupor
Traffic thick again on University Road
Sudden alertness of shopkeepers
As the bazaar bustles and jostles
University Town at a nearby distance
Draws its walls closer around
Peshawar is unsafe
Accompanied by radio antennae and guns
The UN and I climb the frontier mountains
“Welcome to the Khyber Pass”
Tourists greeted by signs and soldiers
Welcome to wildness and romantic imaginings
Beautiful breathtaking spectacular magnificent
Words accurate and inadequate
For this seductive and intimidating place
The road winds ribbons round the rockface
No tanks here, just 4wheeldrives and guns
And bustruckloads of those returning
The War Is Over Now
Two hours and fifty-four kilometres
A journey to the edge of lives
Peshawar is a long way away
Shalman sits like a surprise in the valley
A sudden peopling amidst barrenness
A clearing in the mountains
A flat place to pitch tents
Twenty thousand people in a holiday camp
Latrine enclosures like green marshmallows
And shalegrey gravestones like menhirs
Punctuate the beige monotony
Where water and hope are rare
Where Kabul Kunduz Mazar are memories
And Peshawar only a thought
Shalman’s fortunes are those of war
Open in January overflowing in March
In April the men line up
There are eight nine ten in our family
One tent is not enough
In May the womenchildren line up
For medicines and extra flour
In June the families pack up
We can go back now
The War Is Over
Memories picked up where left off
But Kabul Kunduz Mazar are not the same
Do not have buildings jobs homes
Do not have food do not have water
And only the women have tents
Blue like the screened-off sky
The returners return again across mountains
Peshawar is a gentler and safer place

Bronwyn Winter is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of French Studies at the University of Sydney and is the co-editor (with Susan Hawthorne) of September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives (2002).

From: September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives
Eds. Susan Hawthorne and Bronwyn Winter
pp 245-253

Website: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au