Dilruba, Sarang

We were meant to be bartering for a rug the colour of blood oranges.
But our conversation got derailed. She was from Kunduz.
We both were childless.
But Someone in her village had given her a girl.
No here. She jerked her head. The Taliban. she explained
by pulling her nose, hunching shoulders to show how wretched
the women grew. How they tell me how to pray? Who knows this?
here? She said, hitting her breast harder than I would have.
Her sister stayed years in One room where music was buried
—now she dug— under wood floors Where joy had been kept
in a casket. Dilruba, Saräng! she clapped her hands,
said the words as if I’d understand, laughing.
Then seriously she tapped my head. Music, she said
as she began to dig holding a shovel made Of air.
She danced, two steps of a jig atop a rug whose greys
were the smoke of her eyes grown distant and strange.
This was the rug I carried home. A nap Of brown
shot with Caspian blue, clipped close as a boy’s head.
My husband didn’t understand. It wasn’t red.
We’d said red, or orange. But then I told him
how music. unburied, can fill a belly like a piece of bread.
The toula is a flute. The tar has two strings, looks like a lute.
A woman Without a child must give birth to something.
Dilruba, Sarang! I said pointing to my breast. In here.