Kabul Haiku

Dust storms cause squinting.

The wrinkles around your eyes

Are bad, and not good.

Okay, I guess I fell down a bit on the last line, but otherwise it fulfills all the critical haiku components: a 5-7-5 syllable structure and reference to season and place (dust storms are primarily a summer phenomena).

The dust is bad.

What this place needs is a dust index, though I'm probably better off not knowing. As it is, we gauge whether we should leave our windows open at night by the density and size of the dust halo around our guest house's outdoor lamp. The problem isn't so much the occasional dust storm, as the constant level of dust in the air, kicked up by passing cars, the occasional breath of wind, etc. It's most obvious, frighteningly so, at night, when the headlights of passing cars illuminates it like a thick fog. A few nights ago we could barely see to drive.