Poem for 1/10/22 - Walnuts in Nangarhar - by Zohra Saed

 

Walnuts in Nangarhar

Zohra Saed

That time in Aagam when father, a child then, picked fresh walnuts with the mountain girls; they showed him the fleshy green skin over shell & nut he rubbed on his lips & cheeks, giggling. The girls circled around him, clapped in unison & teased. In a hand mirror, he saw himself stained pink, a delicious trick that kept its color a full week— That time so long ago, in the season of walnuts.

Copyright © 2022 by Zohra Saed. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 10, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem “My father, at the age of five, went to Aagam on vacation. He grew up in Jalalabad. Walnuts and pine nuts grow in abundance in Afghanistan. He told me this memory to share how young girls learned to take the flesh of the walnut fruit to make a lipstick stain. I think of those trees on the mountains. I think of those young girls who were my father’s age then, grandmothers now.” —Zohra Saed