Just you and me in that '78 Datsun
wind bursts through the windows
our faces flushed
mercury rising along the endless
pockmarked Hub River Road
that spears through the Baluchistan Desert
beaten trucks adorned like a madman's canvas swish past
become hypnotic color-wheel swirls in the horizon
those bastard charsis drive faster
their sclera webbed with red
as they choke in cabins thick with homegrown smoke
naswar stuffed under their paan-stained lips
their eyelids flutter like butterfly wings
our heads twist northward to see
the smashed balls of color
we cruise slowly
moving closer a gingerbread house is
an abandoned stone hut
atop a mountain of layered dust
a parched matki at its door
I turn to you and ask
who lives there?
a shrine for some holy man
but obviously not a Baba Ghazi
the dilapidated ruins fade behind the headrest
as my wandering eyes turn away
this never-ending road forks south
the Datsun protests as its heavy body
heaves on a donkey's path
the sandy plain extends into infinity
and infinity gushes skyward
into the Baluchistan plateau
you brake and twist the key
my small brown hand enveloped in yours
we walk to heaven
Janat ul Baki
you show me where your father's bones sleep
run your fingers like undulating snakes
through decades of dry sand on his grave
expressionless as the grains
loosen and dance away in the whistling wind
you tell me how your father
should have had a shrine
but not like Baba Ghazi
he settled for even less
I was only told years and continents later
after we buried you
that your infant son
also lay in Janat ul Baki
waiting for qayamat
Lasbela Hub-Chawki Jumpir
hold your name still
yet the rivers have run dry
and the land-grabbers refuse to leave
I leave you at Janat ul Baki
in that '78 Datsun
spider-web windshield
sand streams through six perfect
holes
it is never the same without you
