Bamian: A Photograph from Tricycle, 2000

The boy with the beautiful face of central Asia like an almond stood on its tip (the nose and cheek-curves almonds within an almond) stands guarding the almost featureless images of our larger nature, Pheidias by way of Alexander. . . Not his religion, even, but his ancestors’, and so worth respecting; worth disrespecting, to his enemies, because he, a Hazara, is Shiite, and they’re Sunnis. The semi-automatic cradled in his hands seems hardly a weapon, capped with a pagoda- or minaret-shaped cone. . .        Two sides of the world’s vise closing on him. Ours will be bad enough, but for now it’s benevolent, bringing medicines and a needed witness. As for the others. . .      Genghis Khan, in his time, killed everyone in this narrow valley. Before the end, someone like this boy will bury the guest-books, with the names— hippies I knew from the ’60s, who smoked a bong on the Buddha’s forehead—out in a fallow field.

Hindus will spill pig’s blood on the floor of a mosque in Delhi. His tribe, returning, will bow to the empty caves.