food parcels

Food Parcels

From sandy coloured landscape, that has
patches of green where rivers run in hidden
valleys, women in black burka appear on
the dusty road. A little later a military truck
comes into view and stops, the women chat
eagerly amongst themselves, they have lined
faces, have lived in misery so long that they
are now insult proof. The men in the truck
hand out parcels of sugar, tea, tinned milk
and rice, they dislike this work, think it’s
beneath them, take pathetic reprisal by rudely
shouting at the women, who quickly leave
the road, disappear into a mud walled villages,
unseen from the gravel road and the world