'78 Datsun

by Sahar Rizvi

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 scleras 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

spiderweb windshield

sand streams through six perfect holes

it is never the same without you