Megan Eaves

exhale. what is there to say about the roads we drove in the middle of the world?

i remember the bumps less, it’s always the way with hindsight. the discomforts, the lack, the pain. these evaporate quickly, though they take up our whole field of vision at the time.

bumps, bumps, bumpy, i thought maybe there was whiplash coming, and then we stopped to wait for the other jeeps. we were a day and a half from mobile signal, and we didn’t have walkie talkies or a satellite phone. we should have had both, but we didn’t, and so we stopped, waited, looked back – west – for plumes of dust. were they behind? anywhere? no sign of tyres kicking up dirt miles back. where are they?

instead, we walked to the edge of zorkul, no wind, no sound, no eagles flying overhead. nothing, well except afghanistan is there, like a portrait in a frame, mountains heralding the pamir and the headwaters of the amu darya. we walk, leaving bootprints in the soft dusty mounds, down a hill and over forgotten phone lines. in this part of the world, they feel harmless and terrifying, like anything out here could be a mine. the lake is glassy and the blue of some sky not from here. how do rivers come rushing from nothing here?

we walk, we are quiet. then, plumes of dust.

these are not roads, but we take them anyway.