(Pachto)

« (yawazi mee pregda!) یوازی می پریښده (leave me alone)! »
« No! I’m sorry but Kabul is sinking into the sands of hell.
I can’t abandon you to the gloomy eye of the devil,
خوښېنه یم chwaschina em (I am sorry) for my lies

I just wish your smile would fly away like the embers
If you still have love for me,
مهربانی وکړه دا ولیکه (mehrabani wokra da wolika) (please write it down somewhere)
On a sheet of cigarette paper or on the ground

(Dari)

Let’s go to another country
The road will be اید schajad (perhaps) our last asylum,
The sky shows us the way, he who sighs infinitely
Above our human morals

Your hair smells of yaasaman یاسمن (jasmine)
I’ll breathe your breath until I go mad
I have no more money, I have no more wine
And Kabul lights up under the fighting

(Pashto)

یوه ژبه هیڅ کله بس نده (one language is not enough)
I will trace our names in Pashto and Dari on the walls
The shadows pass by, I thought I saw the flash of a kalache pass by.
In the night of blood, the red bird flew through Kabul.

You see this sanema – سینما (cinema) under the rubble
I think the ghost of an old actor invites us to join him
And the baran – باران (rain) of his words falls on the movie screen
The weather is weraz – وریځ (cloudy) the red bird is watching us

(Dari)

Follow me into the garden of the Babur emperor,
Take my hand in the Bâgh-e Wafâ (« the garden of fidelity »)
Let your shaal شال (shawl) wrap the flight of the red bird
He will bring it back to you set with magical patterns

The ghosts of old women
Who fell under the bombs while having tea
Laugh and invite us to converse with them,
My love, take my hand, let’s go.

(Pachto)

I proposed to you in front of a a pewleys – پوليس (policeman)
His face was stained with dust, his eyes
Was shadowed with the past. I pressed his hand into mine.
In Kabul as names become graves

زه ستا سره مينه کوم (za la ta sara meena kawom) (I love you)
But the Taliban have stormed the endless night
Close your hand on the light of a star!
It will protect you from fate

(Dari)
You see, this sitara ستاره (star) has begun to shine, no it’s not a warplane
Your eyelashes closed from exhaustion.
Forgive me for my lies,
Come, we must keep moving

Through the rubble, the godless sky,
Forget our memories,
(Man nami dâtam) من نمی دانم (I don’t know where we will be tomorrow)
One day we’ll be back dancing like crazy in the gardens of Kabul.

(Pachto)

(marasta!) مرسته (help!)
زه ستا سره مينه کوم (za la ta sara meena kawom) (I love you)
But the Taliban stormed the endless night
« (yawazi mee pregda!) یوازی می پریښده (leave me alone)! »

Never! Close your hand on the light of a star
It will protect you from fate
Come and dance in the only bar still open tonight
The river of the city is a dance floor, neon lights are hanging on the mausoleums