The Fire in the Kart-e-Sakhi Cemetery

The last time I was a child, I lit a bonfire in the Kart-e-Sakhi Cemetery in Kabul.

In 1997 I got a purple firefish for my birthday. It sat in a tank in the kitchen and died three weeks later when parasitic worms sucked out all its blood.

In the 1930s I worked a brief stint as a fireman, driving sparkling red trucks around Pennsylvania. One afternoon in warm July, I rescued a child from a burning house but could not make in back in time to save the mother, who died in the suffocating, smoky blackness.

In the 1700s I lived in Denmark and found my wife in bed with another man. Three days later she was burned at the stake for witchcraft. She was wearing her blue dress.

In third century Greece I was a juggler, entertaining the Royal Courts by eating fire. One morning in April I was distracted by a young girl crying out the corner of my eye and accidentally breathed in. The fire burned the back of my throat and collapsed one of my lungs.

In 79 A.D. in Pompeii, I died holding my daughter when Mount Vesuvius erupted and spit hot streams of ash over us, her burrowing her head into my chest in fear.

This was my individual path through the fire – the fire that is always flickering and is never still.

It’s 2010 and I’m a sperm burrowing my way into an egg. Just yesterday I died in Kabul. My leg caught fire as I waved it too close, and the fire crept up my body like a dirty bomb creeps over a city, and I burned alive there standing in the Kart-e-Sakhi Cemetery among the gravestones and the dry dust.