Cuervo, New Mexico

Jirga Center . . .

Abandoned last year after its caretaker, an Afghan, was killed coming to work.  The word Jirga means circle in Turkish.  In Afghanistan Jirga is a meeting place or council to resolve conflicts, especially war.  That’s what this place was, a place of coming together, of healing.   

But now it’s abandoned and overgrown.  Forgotten.  A few small buildings surrounded by gardens, inside high-walls that were built by the Soviets before they withdrew in 1989.  Outside of those, even larger T-walls to protect from incoming rockets. 

Although the Soviet walls are pocked with bullet holes, holding dark secrets, they are beautiful in places, with crumbling, exposed red brick interiors.  On top of the walls are elaborate, hand-forged ironwork spears, the Soviet version of barbed wire. 

Within the walls is a grove of trees including mulberry, apple and pear.  There are even red buds, the same ones that grow wild on the side of country roads in Oklahoma.  They are pink with fire this time of year, their bark pale slippery gray.  Between the trees are many rose bushes, overgrown, in need of pruning.  There is also an elevated wooden deck covered by a pergola with an ancient grape vine growing up the sides and over the top.  A small creek runs through the garden with a bridge made of river stones.  And stands of lush green, untended grass, weeds and wildflowers grow everywhere.  A rarity on this arid plane.      

And birds . . .

All winter nothing but a few hearty species in this desert - mynahs, laughing doves, sparrows, pigeons, magpies.  But now, in the infancy of spring, here in this garden, there are many birds, mostly unidentifiable to me.  A good thing, perhaps, because I’m forced to listen to the sweet symphony of their combined calls without the mind’s scientific organizations.  A symphony overpowering the diesel trucks behind the walls, helicopters hovering.  Said Walt Whitman, some vagueness, some ignorance is necessary, credulity in fact, to enjoy these things, as the sun peaks above the eastern mountains towards Pakistan. 

In a dream I was a gardener in this place of war.  So, I decided this morning I’ll become the unofficial caretaker, Friday mornings perhaps.  A boot knife, some gloves and these old boots should do.  Completing the circle. 

3/23/18

Jirga Center
Afghanistan

Cuervo, New Mexico

Cuervo, New Mexico

Cuervo, New Mexico

Route 66

Texas Panhandle