A tiny village in the northern area of Pakistan called Baltistan. It is day’s walk to the nearest village, five days walk to the end of the road and the barest possibility of a doctor. Tibetan Buddhism , over centuries, has become Islam.

She wears a scarf, not just as we walk by, but all day every day. We pass by, tourists from America with parkas and shoes, her distant cousins carrying our gear for us. She tenders a tentative wave.

She has a dream as she watches. A dream that she could go to school, a dream to leave this poor village, a dream to marry and have a family that eats well and her children also go to school. A dream that she will never again go down to the windowless stone hut by the river where the women of her village are sent for their periods.

There will be trouble for her. The brother there on her right will tell his father that she waved. Her time in the stone hut will be quite a bit more than three or four days. It doesn’t matter whether it was a forbidden dream or whether she was just impulsively foolish.

You have what I don’t: Blueness is your woman …
And the return of the wind to the wind, your shelter
Soar! The way the spirit within thirsts
for the spirit. Clap for the day that your feathers
weave. Abandon me, if you like
For my house, like my words, is narrow.    Mahmoud Darwish

George's selection of 66 Phlogs is available in print from People's Press.

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