Kabul, 1976
By Zuhra Malik
Identifies with the nation of Afghanistan
I found my baba smoking
under the apricot trees,
hunched around a stack of cards
and a pile of dirty afghanis.
He pulls a bill from his pocket,
a tip from the American tourists,
after driving them to Bamiyan,
where they posed like statues
and tried to sit atop donkeys.
I had a dream they were gone,
the sky became hollow.
He tosses a card: king of spades.
I wonder how much he bet
his life depended on it—
ask any orphan of war.
Born in New York City and raised in Virginia, Zuhra Malik is an Afghan American poet and civil engineer. She won the 2024 Banyan Poetry Prize. Her poems have previously appeared in KAIROS and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She has an orchid collection and a Bengal cat.