My grandmother’s black burqa billowed in the wind
As she pressed neat footprints into white, powdery snow,
Dreaming of God’s distant Arabian home—
An immaculate black cube.
An oil lantern, held high by a peasant woman, hallowed her
Holy head and cast a long, scintillating shadow on the frosted ground.
Women gathered around her, as if she were nectar, a relic,
Light leaking through their billowing hems,
Failing to veil the divine secret from mortal eyes.
Outside, Muhamad waits in his blue cab, risking his life,
Ready to steer the pilgrims out of this snowbound village,
Toward the airport in the plains—
To glide above the snow-laden Himalayas
And seek salvation in the scorching Arabian sands.
Many faces flicker in the beaming headlights and my hook-nosed grandfather,
Who praises Hitler and hates women, is too proud of his lineage,
Counts rosary beads in multiples of eleven and promises supplications,
To the craning necks through the windows.
Grandmother shuts the door on her world,
Holding back the rivers in her cinnamon-tinted eyes,
While my grandfather clings to a frost
Too cold for the Arabian sun to melt.
Ubaid Bukhari is a poet and literature teacher from Srinagar, Kashmir. His poetry explores reality through a depersonalized and psychologically fragmented lens. The voice is a philosophical meditation on reality that asks questions about identity, being, and the nature of reality itself. His inspirations range from world cinema, classical music, and long distance running.