On hearing the news of the murder of one of my mentors, optometrist Tom Little, in Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan, after a medical expedition to Nuristan. Tom had given thirty-seven years of service to the Afghan people, risking his life to provide life when others had evacuated the chaos of war. He and his wife, with their three daughters, served across political, ethnic and religious boundary lines through a monarchy, a dictatorship, two Communist coups, a Soviet invasion, mujahedeen civil war, the Taliban, and the current fragile Western-backed government. Tom was killed along with another of my mentors Dan Terry and eight others on 5 August 2010.

 

He’ll never know the rocking chair

Or nursing home dementia

With body intravenous fed

While fading mind hangs by a thread.

 

Instead this body pierced with lead

Lived very well, though now slumped dead:

A sacrament in flesh and bone,

A testament with human tone.

 

“This is my body; this is my blood.”

His hands outstretched in brotherhood

Whose parallel in Galilee

Was crucified, nailed to a tree.

 

Greed-struck the robbers lost all sense.

With holier-than-thou pretense

Of hand-wrought righteousness they slay

“The better Muslim,” Afghans say.

 

A man of peace, practical love,

Killed by those he chose to serve

Who shattered earthen vessel’s dust

Revealing treasure without rust.

 

Afghanistan! Afghanistan!

You bite the hand that feeds you!

You blame all others for what’s diseased you!

Scepter, Red Star, Crescent, West –

You’ve squandered every earthly best!

 

The hands that helped your eyes to see

You pierced in blinded shooting spree!

You hack God’s gifts and man’s inventions!

You’ve despised all good intentions!

 

What shock awaits on day called Last

When quick and dead from now and past

Are raised to face you, eye-to-eye.

That man you killed – he did not die!

 

And yet, “These are worth dying for,”

You’d told your kids on bunker floor.

You’d died for decades, ten times ‘round

And that’s how you a rich life found.

 

Now it’s my turn to do the choosing

To save my life (destiny losing)

Or risk the bullet, blade and bomb.

I shall follow the steps of Tom.

 

~ km