I will say that, [in this regard], he was hardly alone.

Now, [after ten years of drought], the river too ran shallow.

[Because he had a large family to feed], Baba Ayub saw his days consumed by hard work.

It sat in a flat, dusty plain [ringed by a chain of craggy mountains].

At any given moment [you could spot him] in his field, bent at the waist, back as curved as the scythe he swung all day.

[The wind was hot, and blew dust in the eyes].

Finding water was a daily struggle [because the village wells], even the deep ones, [often ran low].

His hands were always callused, [and they often bled], and every night sleep stole him away no sooner than his cheek met the pillow.

[Life in Maidan Sabz was hard] for all its inhabitants.

He lived with his family in a little village [by the name of Maidan Sabz].

But Maidan Sabz was a desolate place, and it didn’t resemble in the slightest the image that its name, [Field of Green], would have you picture.

[Every day], he labored from dawn to sundown, plowing his field and turning the soil and tending to his meager pistachio trees.