1
Mazari is the event of truth; the hadith of blood and the speaking word of justice. For the justice-seekers of Afghanistan, the final days of the year are days of renewing the covenant with Mazari’s blood. Those who remain loyal to the “event of justice” raise the voice of justice-seeking from Mazari and the martyrs of the resistance in West Kabul throughout the world, proclaiming their “loyalty” to this event. Despite some marginalizations, opportunisms, misuses, and political-instrumental views that are common, usual, and even unavoidable in the human world, there can be no doubt that Mazari not only does not fit within the false framework of the “national,” but is the sole “radical” voice and “common language” through which the existing unjust situation can be critiqued. Despite extensive efforts to “governmentalize Mazari,” he never became a “national and governmental martyr” and always remained as an identity-forming and equality-seeking subject in his “specifically human capacity.” In the historical mindset of this society, he will never be accepted as a “national martyr” and, as the subject of true politics, will eternally remain outside the framework of any government. The fact that Mazari’s image is absent from any government office is theoretically fully justifiable; he is a radical leader and “equality-seeker,” and as the sole subject in whom “justice” first took form in Afghanistan’s history filled with oppression, he never aligns with governmentalization, because “the state in its essence is indifferent to justice… Justice cannot be a governmental plan or program; justice is a necessary condition for an egalitarian political orientation, and it is impossible to realize within the framework of the state due to its unequal and hierarchical structure.” Mazari represents equality-seeking and justice, and therefore threatens the “existing order.” Justice is a phenomenon of times of unrest, emerging in “rupture and disorder,” not in order and stability. Justice reveals the aspects of discontinuities. If Mazari’s opponents, as national figures, represent false solidarities and are integrated with the unequal structure of the current government, Mazari, as the “subject of truth,” unveils the face of ruptures and reveals the gaps and discontinuities that are the only truth of our present. Mazari is not only a preserver of the existing situation but, as an “equality-seeking” leader, brings the present into a phase of crisis and “reveals the repressed dimension of political power.” More precisely, he “represents the face of the political subject” that is “potentially the bearer of a universal address” and calls the “excess” — which has been exiled from the power equation for years — back into the situation. Mazari represents egalitarian and liberating thought; liberating thought does not add indeterminate borders to political power but limits it and reveals its violent and repressive aspects. Oppressive thought, however, is vague and ambiguous, always hiding itself in the guise of indeterminate ideas such as “homeland,” “nation,” “religion,” “jihad,” “democracy,” and the like. Egalitarian thought calls the excess back into power, while equality-denying thought produces excess by negating the existence of part of society. What distinguishes Mazari from other political leaders is that he calls the “excess (excluded political groups)” to interrupt and overturn the usual course of conservative politics. While his opponents, through monopolization, injustice, and inequality, have always sought, by any trick and ruse, to produce excluded groups and turn political power into something vague, ambiguous, and unmeasurable. The nature of egalitarian thought and the logic of radical action require that he appear not as a reducible and interpretable leader into a “national martyr,” but as an “axiom of equality-seeking” that is synonymous with destroying the foundations of injustice at all levels, from literature to economy, politics, and culture. In the current situation where the wall of ethics and human virtues has completely collapsed and everything revolves around personal interests, Mazari is the sole firm foundation for “subjects completely free from personal interests,” the “ideal of justice-seeking” and “liberating thought” that can direct our “ethical” and “human” aspirations; a justice-seeking ideal that always assumes leadership of a true, egalitarian, and non-assimilable politics into the state, whether the jihadi government, the Islamic Emirate, the “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,” or any other government. He rejects any infinite and unbridled political power that imagines itself the sole custodian of “legitimate violence,” and for this reason, his thought necessarily leads to “justice” and “liberation.” The reason he shines brighter and clearer on the dark sky of history as time passes is that he is outside the current situation and always in the realm of utopia: the utopia of justice and liberation, and ultimately, with blood and honor, signed the “egalitarian command” in which “a political actor is represented only under the sign of his specifically human capacity,” and for this reason, the “martyr” is alive, present, and eternally immortal.
2
Since Mazari is the “event of truth” and the sole political face of “equality-seeking” and “justice-seeking,” speaking and writing about him — who reveals the most extreme aspects of this society’s fractures — is difficult. Mazari is the sacred verse of “firm” and “allegorical” justice in our history; firm and clear, because by calling the excess into the situation, he makes political power measurable, while infinite and uninterpretable, because he represents the true political subject that shines in the rupture of historical order and in “moments of danger.” He represents not so much “national unity” — the false concept now attributed to Mazari — but differences and “fractures,” because he is “truth” and has no relation to a “national unity” that is fundamentally illusion and error. Despite all the difficulties and hardships, tonight I want to take the risk and speak of Mazari; of “love and justice”; of the truth of truth of truth, the principle of principles of principles; of the faith of faith of faith; of the blood of blood of blood and the light of light of light. But translating blood and truth and faith and light into words is impossible and forbidden. Blood is living speech, and returning it to the “language of fall” carries ethical and human responsibility. Therefore, when speaking, one must consider the ethical status of “blood” and “expression,” both of which are “sacred.” Blood and speech must be honored; we have no right to speak meaningless words about Mazari. Adorning him in the garb of false and fabricated concepts is betrayal of history, and opportunistic uses and opening shops over his grave — which is potentially the bearer of all and refers to subjects completely free from personal interests — will distance us from truth. Mazari is the response to all injustices, genocides, and skull-towers; cliché-making Mazari and propagandizing his ideal is betrayal of the justice-seeking movement and places us among the traitors. Cliché-making and turning him into posters — posters that advertise current leaders who have no relation to justice-seeking more than Mazari — is not remembrance but forgetting, double oppression, and killing Mazari’s name on the altar of words devoid of message. “His blood was shed, it flowed,” but we must not allow this sacred blood to become the “scratch for the itch of political dogs and opportunistic intellectuals.” Instead of making Mazari, this sole “event of truth,” a cliché for satisfying the pleasure of repetition, or reducing his human ideal — the call for “justice” and “equality” in the “court of history” — to religion, ethnicity, or tribe, it is better to remain silent. When meaningless speeches and cheap, stylish words become the sole model of speaking, silence is the most eloquent expression; because in the world of silence, instead of saying “Mazari” and thus reducing Mazari to a repeated and meaningless linguistic experience, we will feel his truth with a kind of immediate intuition that establishes an existential and “ontological” bond between us and Mazari. Silence is unspeakable speech, especially in the absence of meaningful discourse; silence is the sole language that shares the historical suffering of the oppressed human. Mazari must be understood through silence and heartfelt attention; that is, precisely when our language is silent, but our heart understands him and beats in his love. Mazari is more “felt” and “understood” than said; we must not limit connection with Mazari solely to the “mediation” of language, which in the era of fall shares nothing. Just as the word “rain” or “red rose” is a veil that conceals the truth of rain and red rose, and just as we cannot grasp the freshness of rain or the unspeakable beauty of the red rose with words and linguistic descriptions, speech creates “separation” between us and Mazari: “There is separation because there is speech.” Mazari is the superior language that shares everything that has happened in our world, but there is no superior language to him that can share him. Mazari shares himself, just as Afshar, this “living text of the history of the oppressed,” turns its pages with the language of languagelessness and shares its existence through deprivation from itself. Understanding this language, however, in which all the secrets and mysteries of history reside, is not easy; one must become “mad,” “mystic,” “lover,” and in a mystical-loving trance, intuitively witness his truth in a majnun-like manner. Whoever cannot feel Mazari in languagelessness will never feel him in linguistic words; whoever cannot grasp Mazari in “silence” will never find him in sound. Whoever’s heart is indifferent to Mazari, their ears, tongue, and mind will also be indifferent. Fatwa-sellers do not understand Mazari, this “crucified Messiah,” and will never understand; Judahs will betray him; political shopkeepers of the Hazara have eaten his blood, eat it, and will eat it. Mazari is a scream in his silence and a voice in his quietude. He is the sole image that shines even in times of danger if official discourse ignores him and leaders and intellectuals fear remembering him. That “strange man” whom I don’t know who he was or where he came from! And I only know that he is my sole acquaintance, and now in the “mountain of the soul” experiences Mazari in silence, was right when he said that in the era of clamor and slogans and chaos — the era of dwarfs — speech becomes meaningless. The ears of the dwarfs of the “era of dwarfism” have no appetite to hear speech and do not grasp Mazari’s truth; in such a situation, silence must be considered the most artistic form of “expression,” and “we must be so artistic that we speak with our silence, because only with silence can one be eloquent.”
3
I wish I were as artistic as the “strange man” to intuitively witness truth in the “vineyard of salvation in silence,” I wish I could scream Mazari and the century-old silence of my history in the heart-wrenching sound of silence in the “mountain of the soul,” but no, I am not that artistic to be eloquent with silence. Only the “strange man” is “eloquent with silence,” and with his “not-saying” displays the essence of the era of meaninglessness, the era of human dwarfism; no, I have not yet mastered the “art of silence,” the “art of discovering truth.” I must study for years in the school of the “strange man” to become the voice of the “daughter of the sea” on such a night, the longest night of history, and understand the language of silence, especially the century-old silence that the monster has ruled over my cities, swallowing sounds and words. No, I do not have the endurance to bear the heavy and hard verses of silence; only a “constant wanderer” can endure the crushing barrage of the verses of silence; only he waits at night in his loneliness and homelessness for the arrival of the “angel of darkness.” No, where am I and the strange man? I do not have the strength to bear the dazzling brilliance of the eyes of the angel of darkness. My sole inspiration in this horror-city is the “angel of melancholia,” who is “stranger than the strange man” in her exile and alienation, screaming the blackness and decay of all this horror and ruin; the angel who has the stature of the mountains of “Baba Mountain” and plays the history of silence on the two strings of the “Abe Mirza” tar with her “blue nails.” Where are you, O “angel of melancholia,” so that with your heart-wrenching tone I can scream a history of silence. Come, let us “sing” and “remain,” for tonight “my heart is longing without reason”; come, let us drink from the Messiah-like wine of Mazari and, drunk and mad, dance before his blue eyes, bloom and make bloom even if they “stone” us. These eyes are the spring of life; come, let us drink from the wine of these eyes, become mad, and experience “eternity” in one night. Eternity is only a “moment”; the moment when in the light of Mazari’s eyes we reach the ultimate ecstasy, intoxication, and hangover. Tonight, “a light has risen for those who dwell in death and darkness” (a light that emanates from Mazari’s eyes and bestows its rays in “moments of danger”). Come, let us write a text whose words are silence, and thus return the silence of the strange man to text. “Come, let us melt the steel stubbornness of the strange man’s silence in the furnace of our scream.” Come, tonight let us watch Kabul with the “staring eyes” of Nasrullah Pik’s camera. He witnessed the collapse of houses and the ruins that we constantly understand; he, like Benjamin’s “angel of history,” saw one by one the piles accumulating on each other. Come, let us grasp Mazari’s gaze and in the flame of the dazzling lights of his eyes become a “volcano,” spin a “charkh,” reach out to earth and sky, “make earth sky,” rain and become a flood, and uproot the history of oppression from its foundations. Come, tonight from this street and from this “horror-city” where everything is snakes and ants, let us migrate and travel to the “city of the blue eyes of the father” where the spring of life is there. Come, let us abandon the “city of people,” the city of oppression and inequality; let us go to the “lost Zabul” and, in memory of the massacred of history, illuminate this lost city with the blue light of justice. “Alley by alley, tonight my heart is longing” and wants pure wine: the pure wine of life from the hands of the God of chaos and intoxication; tonight my heart is restless, more restless than ever; tonight the “beautiful thing” has manifested in my soul, brighter than any other time. Tonight in the plain of Uruzgan I see the “circle of dancers of the forty girls”; the forty martyred girls whose bodies were bloody and unshrouded for years, tonight they have worn blue clothes and are spinning and dancing before these eyes. Tonight, the strange man has read me the story of the “daughter of the sea”; do you know who the daughter of the sea is? The strange man said she is the “Scheherazade of stories” and in beauty “the talk of lovers and people’s words,” residing atop the hills of Bamiyan: right in front of the almond-shaped and always proud eyes of “Salsal” that scans the depths of the “blue color of the sky” in days and illuminates the stars at night. The daughter of the sea is the mirror of beauty, but she herself has no mirror. She is “the tall peak staring at itself / looking at no one, only staring at herself,” and only once a year views her face in the purest and bluest water in the world: Band-e Amir. Her mirror is the clear water of Band-e Amir; she is mad about blue color; in her view, a color not matching Mazari’s eyes is not a color. Water is her mirror; she views her image in the water of Band-e Amir, which matches the color of Mazari’s eyes. She is the most beautiful girl in the world, tall, with almond-shaped eyes, adorning the thin and impassable lines of her Eastern eyes with a color matching Mazari’s eyes. Once when she was staring at herself in the blue text of Band-e Amir, people saw the reflection of her face in the water and all became mad for her visage. Her home is in the height of the peak, right at the equator of the sun’s smile; until now no one has seen her herself, but whoever sees her image in the water of Band-e Amir becomes eternally mad. She speaks a special language: the ancient language of Zabul. No one understands her language. She tells the mysterious untold story of history and is the queen of the “Republic of Silence.”
4
“The nation that walked in darkness has seen a great light (Matthew 4:15).” Yes! We who walk in darkness have seen a great light. I don’t know if you remember the legend of that enlightened old man who said: Band-e Amir is the document of our incompleteness? He said: Band-e Amir is the document of our eternity; just as the water of Band-e Amir is inexhaustible, we too, even if massacred thousands of times, will not end. There is always a strong dam in which we can take refuge. This strong dam is the legacy of our mothers; a dam that preserves our blue essence from erosion over time and from the harm of wind and rain. I don’t know what the essence color of others’ existence is, but the essence of our existence is blue. The color of Band-e Amir, Mazari’s eyes; that sea in which people saw the reflection of the daughter of the sea’s face was Mazari’s blue eyes, and that old man composed the song of Mazari’s eyes for us; Mazari’s eyes are the document of our “resistance,” “endurance,” and “incompleteness,” and in them one can attain the “completeness of perpetually incomplete life.” Life in the absence of the beautiful thing and aesthetic experience is nothing and void; but only in the infinity of Mazari’s eyes can beauty be experienced fully and completely. These eyes are the mirror of history; the mirror of mirrors. If you stare into the “Band-e Amir of Mazari’s eyes,” you will find me and yourself; you are the daughter of the sea whose beauty aroused everyone’s envy and whose reflection made people mad, and the sole companion and the one who understands your language is I, who tonight, this longest night of history, will tell you stories until morning in the light of Mazari’s eyes. Mazari’s eyes are the “pure poetics of justice” and the configuration of all historical events. Tonight I will turn the pages of history with the blue leaves of these eyes, and a “Fiqh Muhammad Katib” has sparked the fire of my saying existence. Crying in the room of loneliness is not good; shedding tears in a dark corner will not reduce your immense sorrow. Tonight in the bright text of these eyes, I will recite the sorrows that make you cry and tell you all the stories and tales; tales and stories from distant times, from the great king of Zabul, from the glory of golden temples, from their destruction by the first armies of ignorance, the first plunderers of Bamiyan, from Nawshad and Nawbahar, from Mawlana and Bidel and Nasir Khusraw, from Ibn Sina and Abu al-Khayr and Suhrawardi and Hallaj, from Abu Muslim Khorasani and Enayat Khan and Mir Yazdan Bakhsh the martyr, from the religious fatwa for genocide, from sacred Uruzgan, from mass slaughter and screams and corpses and blood, from lost lands of Dayah and Fulad and Dahrawud, from the killed in Tangi Gharu, from the tearing apart of the martyred Shirin in the embrace of merciless rocks, from women who burned alive in fire in Uruzgan, from children thrown from the heights of peaks, from the “tax on breath” law, from Abdul Khaliq and pulling out his almond-shaped eyes with knife and blade, from the Chendawul uprising and the nameless existence and books burned in fire of Ismail Mobligh, from Afshar this book of ruin, from the blackness and decay of the jihad era, from plunder and looting of West Kabul, from “skinning in Qizilabad,” from houses burned in Yakawlang, mass killing in Mazar, cultural genocide in Bamiyan and turning the body of the martyred Buddha to ashes, and finally from the “constant wanderers” who are homeless everywhere and “more landless than the wind,” wandering the world in search of shelter. Crawling in the seclusion of loneliness is not good; come, let us hold each other’s hands and walk before these eyes; in the “crying plain” of these eyes, we can lament our longings. No, lamenting is sin; come, let us laugh at the “obsolete logic” of lamenting and experience joy and exhilaration in these eyes. I have great dreams in my head; dreams that realize only in the utopia of Mazari’s eyes. It is raining; come, you and I rain too and scream in the streets of Kabul: “Father! We are here, Father, we learned from you that one can only live with great dreams, Father! After baptism in the Band-e Amir of your eyes, we were purified from historical sin. We are now pure pure.” Tie your shoelaces tightly because long journeys are ahead. These eyes are infinite, and traveling to them is traveling to the heart of history. The faint and invisible lines of these eyes extend far beyond the horizon of our expectations; not only our past and present meet in its horizon, but we also see the image of our tomorrow in it. Whoever sees the image of you and me in the blue mirror of these eyes will become eternally mad. These eyes are the geography of Zabul. Saddle your white horse! I will also take the old torn notebook inherited from “Fiqh Muhammad Katib” in which the list of all lost cities and people is registered hair by hair, to find in the endless desert of these eyes the wanderers driven out of Uruzgan in the black nights of massacre. These eyes are the “promised land” where the homelessness of “constant wanderers” ends. Do you know where this is? The street where Mazari spoke to the people of Kabul and his heart was not yet wounded by Afshar; at that time you were small, you were not yet the daughter of the sea; exactly that day when you received your image in the blue eyes of the father, you became the daughter of the sea, and exactly that day when the people of this city saw your reflection in the blue mirror of the father’s eyes, they became mad for you, but no one understood your language and grasped the secret of your existence — that you became the daughter of the sea in “Mazari’s blue eyes”; if these eyes did not exist, you would not be here now, nor would I. Hurry, stand facing these eyes and spin a turn, because tonight is the longest night of history, and the people have prepared themselves; tomorrow they will view your image in the Band-e Amir of Mazari’s eyes. Wear your most beautiful clothes, hang your blue necklace, one branch of red flower is not enough; you must sing the lost voice of Abe Mirza in the depth of these eyes, to “remain” and “dido” the lost dreams of the martyred Shirin so sadly and “lament until the mountain and mountains lament!” Stand tonight and come with me, O daughter of the sea, whose soul is full of Mazari, and I want to scream Mazari, this blue verse of justice, in the ear of history through your throat. Tonight is the night of Mazari’s ascension to the “kingdom of the divine,” to the divine kingdom, to the kingdom of thousands of eager, loving, and passionate human hearts. My soul and body are on fire, burning, and like all lovers, I am longing for Mazari; longing for the years when “Baba,” this “speaking word of the history of silence,” stood against history in West Kabul. Tonight the sacred verse of justice recounts history to me in the language of blood, and in the desert of justice and the Sinai desert of history, I search for the sacred fire that is “white for the beholders” and the full moon.
5
Tonight I want to “practice writing Mazari’s name,” which has now become an “eternal memory”; without Mazari, one cannot remember oneself or think about the past and future. I want to write a note about him or at least pray lovingly in his presence and tell him the sorrows of my time. But no new words come to mind. I must confess that I have no new words; no word is newer than Mazari himself, and no “speech” will be more alive than him, and no gaze more magnificent and mesmerizing than his blue gaze that has made me so drunk and mad tonight; Mazari is the first “wise expression” for our people and the last as well. Our history is unsaid speech, and Mazari is the sole “speaking word” that retells our history. Tonight this speaking word has spoken in me and breaks my silence and isolation. Perhaps I can dialogue with this crucified Messiah of history in this Last Supper by crucifying myself on the nails of words. A mystical Messianic feeling gradually spreads wings in my being: the feeling of “becoming word.” Where should I begin and how far should I run? I don’t know from which angle to look at Mazari, this “sacred verse of firm and allegorical uninterpretable justice”?! Forgive me, because when a human stands before Mazari, this infinite text of justice without beginning or end, one does not know where to begin the narrative. Here it is not just the issue of ending that confuses narratologists; it is the issue of beginning as well, not interpretation but narration, not reception but configuration. Can one summarize the soul in form? Can one contain eternity in shape? Never! Mazari is the eternal word of history, “eternal wisdom”; Mazari is “the Word,” the crucified Messiah in whom “was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it… He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light (John 1:4-5).” Yes! Friends, I don’t know where to begin; Mazari is a text that can be interpreted infinitely. Mazari is a story of longing, and at the same time a story of joy; Mazari is historical wound and also the healing of historical wound; Mazari is a story of departure and staying for both. One can seek help from sensory power and speak of “Mazari’s blue eyes” in the language of “Ali Baba Aurang.” Only a “loving Aurang” can paint Mazari’s eyes so well. I want to stare into “Mazari’s blue eyes” and spend this dark and terrifying night in the shelter of their brilliance in love and intoxication. Tonight I drink from the intoxicating wine of these eyes to become drunk with truth, just as “Aurang” became drunk with truth and painted Mazari’s eyes so vividly. Speech is incapable of describing these beautiful eyes; only the aesthetic sense of an artist — not any artist, but the “loving Aurang” — paints Mazari’s eyes so beautifully and “transcendent”; beauty is not something to be said, beauty is not a concept to describe with language; beauty must be felt, just as “Aurang” felt the beauty of these eyes and then madly and drunkenly depicted it in blue with countless color combinations.
6
Aurang was madly in love with Mazari in those forbidden years; once he connected millions of dots and drew Mazari’s portrait; this time, however, a blue love has come to Aurang: the blue love of Mazari’s eyes; a love that has made me mad tonight too. Tonight I have also become the loving Aurang; I look at Mazari’s eyes; Mazari’s eyes are beautiful, almond-shaped, wide and broad, like blue lotus; Mazari’s eyes are the “firm verse of truth” and the “clear book,” and at the same time uninterpretable and mysterious “justice.” Mazari’s eyes are radiant, and tonight in their brilliance I call people to the “temple of justice.” Tonight a feeling of becoming Aurang has come to me to experience the “madness of Nasir” in these eyes. Now this image is before me; I am staring at Mazari’s brilliant and luminous eyes that turn the pages of human history and compel me in this nocturnal seclusion to stand in prayer before these eyes. One cannot “stand” before these eyes without rising and passing the shore of infinity “without takbirat al-ihram”; in the horizon of these eyes, a vista as vast as human history opens; these eyes are the sacred verse in which the glow of “truth” shines; these eyes are the sacred verse in which the glow of “truth” shines. The majesty of this gaze was always visible to me, and tonight in Aurang’s painting it is much more visible; these blue eyes are the same “Nile River” that holds the “ark of the covenant” of Moses in its kind waves. For the first time in these eyes, the “tent of meeting” was erected, and in it people spoke with “God” and found name in God. These eyes are the same Sinai desert, and I, more wandering than “Moses,” traverse the deserts in this dark night searching for the “fire of truth,” to steal it from the “gods” like the “martyred Prometheus” and teach humans the sacred verses of “rebellion”; the spark of these eyes is the spark of “love,” and now that I feel myself in the horizon of this gaze’s vision, “the whole world is mine.” I was a sinner, a born criminal; I had no specific crime; I was criminal for “my being”; for the first time in the clear water of these eyes I was “purified” and attained “sanctity” as a human. The first one who found and bore the guilt of my being was “Mazari”; it was in the vista of these eyes that I realized: “Our existence is in danger, our being is in danger!” This sinful being tonight is sanctified in the blue ocean of his eyes, attains sanctity. These blue eyes that have filled me with truth tonight are the same eyes of Moses to whom God said: “Go to the people and sanctify them today and tomorrow (Exodus 19:11).” These blue eyes evoke the same blue eyes of Christ who on the hill of Golgotha raised a storm in the bloody sunset to purify the ugliness and impurity of the soul. These eyes are the dialectic of seeing and not seeing; gazing at these eyes is difficult; I am ashamed of these eyes, and not gazing at them is more difficult.
7
I remember in the evening sunset of this gaze, the “plague of darkness” enveloped the city of Kabul, and West Kabul turned to ashes in smoke and darkness. Still, the book of ruin and “ruins of memory” attests to those dark days. The ruins of memory are the living document of that era and the text in which the history of the jihad era’s decay is evident hair by hair. The ruins of memory recall the sunset and exile of these eyes. The sunrise and sunset of the sun of this gaze determine our fate; one cannot distance oneself from the blue horizon of these eyes; one cannot live without Mazari’s gaze’s smile; tonight my ship of imagination has hoisted sails in the rising and roaring waves of “Mazari’s blue eyes” and the thin and invisible ring of these almond-shaped eyes takes me to the world of metaphysics, to trance and absolute liberation, to experience faith in intoxication more Aurang than “Ali Baba Aurang.” The invisible lines of these Eastern eyes are “illumination of truth” and “truth of illumination,” leading me to the shore of hope and liberation, to where “salvation and redemption” is and the wandering of this “Moses of Khorasan”‘s nation of desert-dwellers ends. “Mazari’s eyes are the verse of our being”; all existence can be summarized in his gaze. These eyes are the gushing spring of existence, and in this gaze fixed on distant horizons, fixed on three directions — future, present, and past — one can recite the verses of “salvation.” O people! “Sing songs of joy, O people! Pray before these eyes”; these eyes are the “promise of liberation”; they are the verses of the “covenant” that “God’s blood” made with people: “I asked God that my blood be shed beside you.” Yes, his blood was shed beside us: “This is the blood of the covenant that God made with you. According to the law, almost everything is purified with blood (Hebrews 9:21-22).” His blood became faith, became friendship, and ended a hundred years of confusion and speechless “Babelian turmoil” for the sinful “Hazara” nation; it became altar, became truth, became Afshar, became West Kabul, became Uruzgan, became Mazar, became Yakawlang and Bamiyan, became Sadiq Siah, became everything. Tonight in the vast plain of these eyes I will find my lost “Zabul,” my usurped lands, my now and past and future. Tonight I am drunk with the wine of these eyes. Curse on those who do not find the joy of this gaze, and damnation on those who do not understand the pain and sorrow of this gaze. This gaze holds grace and wrath simultaneously; one can take refuge in the calm of this gaze, but fear the day when this clear and blue sea rebels. Tonight my heart has sung songs of joy, songs of liberation and redemption; in the shelter of this gaze’s smile, I have taken the world for nothing. Why should I not be drunk with these eyes? These eyes take me to the world of “Fiqh Muhammad Katib,” and why should I not be mad when staring at them allows experiencing the “madness of Nasir.” Why should I not believe in the blue truth of these eyes when these eyes fill my existence with truth, I attain enlightenment and become “Buddha.” By drinking the wine of these eyes, one can attain the trance of Buddhahood, believe in truth, and remain “Buddha” forever, and Aurang, yes “Ali Baba Aurang,” has understood the miracle of these eyes more than anyone and how well he has translated the truth of this pure gaze into a sensory and visible gaze. I don’t know how Aurang attained this mystical trance and how ecstatic it was for him; how Aurang’s sacred hands discovered the miracle of this gaze and how these blue eyes appeared in Aurang’s hands and spoke to Aurang in the language of color, just as God manifested to Moses on Mount Sinai and Moses became the interlocutor. Aurang is the “interlocutor of Mazari’s gaze”; he has “spoken” with Mazari’s blue eyes! This painting is the gushing of Aurang’s love, expressing the “faith” he experienced in the rainbow of Mazari’s blue eyes. These eyes are the dwelling place of God and the mosque and altar where the call to truth has found visual form, and Aurang was able to recite “praise” and “monotheism” in the language of blue colors under the truth of these eyes, turning God’s auditory word into visual and visible word. These eyes are “white for the beholders,” singing the sacred songs of “Moses” and revealing God’s word to him: “O Moses! O Moses!” “Arise and go before this nation, so they enter and possess the land I swore to their fathers (Deuteronomy 10:11).”
8
Yes! Friends, tonight I am mad, mad for Mazari’s gaze; tonight I am drunk, utterly drunk, because I am “practicing being” in Mazari’s blue eyes. Tonight I speak to you in the “language of the daughter of the sea,” in the ancient language of Zabul. Abraham took his son to the altar: “Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son, and an angel of God called him from heaven: ‘Abraham! Abraham! Do not stretch your hand over the boy and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you did not withhold your only son from me (Genesis 22:11-12).'” But Mazari took himself to the altar to bless all nations on earth with his red blood. So why should gazing into these eyes not make me mad! Tonight I am drunk and have drained the pure wine of faith and intoxication and madness to the dregs; tonight I have attained the “transcendent” and “sacred” madness of Nasir in Mazari’s blue eyes; tonight I am ruined, more ruined than Afshar’s ruins, to bear witness to Mazari’s truth; tonight I have attained annihilation and lost myself in this gaze; tonight it is only the gaze and me, united with the blue color of these eyes. Tonight in the text of Mazari’s gaze I have sat to recite all history. I want to travel to distant pasts in the text of these eyes and “search” for my lost truths; go to “Dahrawud,” to “Dayah” and “Fulad,” travel to Uruzgan to recite the sacred verses of “Mazari’s blue eyes” at the invisible graves of my fathers for the joy of their souls, read the “blue eyes of Mazari” surah in cemeteries that exist but are invisible and lost in dust. I must find my burned “Zabul” city in the text of these eyes. Tonight I have sat in the ascension of these eyes before Mazari; I want to soar in the blue geography of these eyes, “be the great king of Zabul and command earth and time.” Change history and stop the earth that has exiled me for years from moving. I must perform the unfinished prayer of “Mir Yazdan Bakhsh” in the destroyed altar of Buddha, where the “martyred Salsal” bears witness to Mazari’s truth with his particle-by-particle disintegration. And get news from the “forty girls,” my martyred sisters who died in the embrace of rocks. One can travel to Katib’s world in the realm of these eyes and say all the unsaid of history. This gaze is absolute, the gaze of the inheritors of the earth; it will perpetually multiply, to the number of Adam’s and Abraham’s generations and all the stars of the sky. God blessed our people with the grace of the blue of these eyes. These eyes are our Old and New Testament. Tonight in the blue text of these eyes I recite Quranic verses: “Whoever kills a soul… it is as if he killed all mankind, and whoever saves a soul… it is as if he saved all mankind.” I want to travel to West Kabul of that time in these eyes, grasp moments that were moments of truth. In the Sinai desert of these eyes, let us hold the hands of those three children fleeing from “Afshar” toward “Silo,” not knowing this unknown road leads them to the altar so their red blood recreates the image of poppies on Kabul’s roads and the sound of their bones breaking is the echo of catastrophe in history. Who but Mazari told us that “ignorance has attacked the city!” No one; and which gaze but Mazari’s gaze saw how tragically those children were crushed under tanks on the city’s entrance road for their innocence, and the armies of ignorance applauded their death. Where did that barefoot mother go who held her child in her arms? Where is that father who recognized his decayed child’s corpse in Afshar’s mass grave from its torn clothes? Only in the text of Mazari’s blue eyes, this supreme “truth of history,” can one find mass graves, this lost truth. These blue eyes are the “witness of history”; which leader but Mazari stood beside the people until the last moment and became the “proof of history”! So let us travel in the endless plain of Mazari’s eyes and stitch my fragmented existence together, like that mother who stitched her child’s torn corpse with the continuous drops of her tears. Mazari recalls all this and therefore is alive, is life, gives life, grows, blooms, and makes grow and bloom. Mazari is the always-living crucified Messiah of our history who said: “I am the vine, and you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown out like a branch and withers; they throw it into the fire and it burns (John 15:6-7).” Mazari is the vine, and we and you are its branches; whoever does not dwell in Mazari’s blue eyes and does not stand in prayer in the altar of these eyes withers, burns, and is expelled from our people; Mazari’s eyes are beautiful, wide and broad, like blue lotus; Ali Baba Aurang and I tonight stand in prayer before these eyes and view the world from the height of these eyes, so that from now on we are not sinful exiled existence but the great king of “Zabul” and ruler of the city of justice. Yes! Mazari’s eyes are the “pure poetics of justice” and the configuration of all historical events. These eyes are the geography of “Zabul.” O people! “Sing songs of joy, O people! Pray before these eyes”; these eyes are the “promise of liberation.”
