Word: wail
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Kabul does retain some scraps of its former character. Donkeys laden with wicker panniers of fruit plod along the muddy side streets. Women beggars, their faces concealed completely by hoods with mesh eye holes, wail for baksheesh outside rug stores. Turbaned tribesmen from the mountains stride along shouldering huge bundles. Boys offer sticks of lamb shashlik grilled over charcoal at street corners. Outside moviehouses there are garish posters of Afghan-made westerns in which ersatz Omar Sharifs twirl six-shooters in each hand. But the cinemas are open only in the afternoons, and ticket sales are slow because...
...bizarre reggaed polka, dreadlocks and kielbasa, an "industrial squeeze" that "looks like a luxury,/Feels like a disease." This is Modern Man bombarded by machines, crying for the human touch as he vocally ascends the scale to keep from being swallowed, and succumbs with a heart-rending wail. The song is followed slam-bang by "Beaten To the Punch," in which Elvis races to keep up with the noisy, busy instruments, seizing opportunities before everyone else, and discovering, as he goes under with a shriek, that he has become a prisoner of his choices...