GEOGRAPHY

“I am chasing you like a drone/You have become al-Qaida/there’s no trace of you.”

Trucks painted in vivid colors and lettered with poems are part of the cultural landscape along the dusty roads of Afghanistan.

The short poems take the form of landays, a style native to Afghanistan and other Pashto regions. The verses are read by passers-by, discussed in homes and shops, and inspire responses. Themes range from tribal honor, politics and religion, to war, love, and homesickness. (Afghanistan Analysts Network)

Use our resources to better understand how landays reflect the cultural landscape of Afghanistan.

Discussion Ideas

• The lead paragraph in the Afghanistan Analysts Network article says that the poetry-laden trucks are most common in Afghanistan’s south and east. Look at our map of “Afghanistan and Pakistan Ethnic Groups.” Why do students think the poems would be more familiar in cities such as Kandahar (Qandahar on the map) or Kabul than Mazar-i-Sharif, in Afghanistan’s north?
  • Landays, the poems seen on the truck, are a type of folk poem among the Pashto (or Pashtun) people of Central Asia. Pashtuns are the majority ethno-linguistic group in Afghanistan, with strongest concentrations in the southern and eastern part of the country.
• Watch our short “picture of practice” video “I Am From.” In it, a teacher outlines how to analyze a poem. Have students choose a landay or two from the Afghanistan Analysts Network article, or from this article from the Poetry Foundation. (NOTE: The Poetry Foundation article includes adult language and themes.) Analyze the poems using the methods in the “I Am From” video.
  • Who wrote this poem?
  • What struggles are they facing? Be specific!
  • What senses are the poets using?
  • Using one-word answers, how do these poems make you feel or react?
  • Can this collection of short answers give a “cultural landscape” to the anonymous poets of Afghanistan?
• Epigrams are probably the closest English-language version of landays. Read more about epigrams in our “media spotlight.” Do students think any of these poems could fit in the cultural landscape of Afghanistan? Why?
  • Benjamin Franklin’s “Little strokes/Fell great oaks” is a spectacular epigram, and as relevant in modern Afghanistan as it was in 1770s America. Why?
• Thousands, perhaps millions, of Afghans discuss the truck-poems. Do students think Western audiences discuss poetry? In what form? Why or why not?
  • Sure they do! Poems take many forms.
    • Traditional poems, such as “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” are discussed in schools and journals.
    • Haikus are deceptively simple poems with a set number of syllables per line: 5-7-5.
    • Internet memes are shared by millions of users. LOL.
    • Bumper stickers, tattoos, and clothes can take poetic license.
    • Song lyrics, from Britten to Beyonce, Janis to Jay-Z, are probably the most-discussed poetry in the West. If students could choose a two-line lyric to put on their car, what would it be? Why?