Abstracted in Afghanistan

I pick cankers for a simple

Choose  a rhapsody in blue

Love lapis lazuli

and you.

I paint the Virgin Mary

With ultramarine pigment

Extracted from lapis lazuli

Only found in north-east Afghanistan

Where I am with the brave Kalash,

In their snow-capped mountains,

Of the Hindu Kush,

They have resisted assimilation into Islam for over a thousand years.

Their culture is unique and threatened with extinction.

The blue-blue skies

And their blue-green eyes

Hide in their high mountain valleys

Before the slaugher of 1893,

When Abdur Rahman Khan

Forced the conversion or death of the remaining kafirs,

Before this desecration the Kalash were happy.

Khan renamed their land Nuristan ‘land of the enightened ones.’

Before there had been many pagans

Now only the brave Kalash remain.

Pakistani men travel here to see unveiled women

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan have announced

A jihad to rid the world of these few, brave non-believers:

The Kalash, descendants of Alexander,

Dance around night-time fires; drink wine,

Practice ancient Olympic Sports

Wrestling and shot-put like the Greeks

With their piercing blue-green eyes, strong features and olive skins,

Even Alexander the Great was convinced of their Hellenic connection

Which is now to be torn to shreds

By ignorant and bigoted devotees of the dead...