Istabraq Rafea
The Girl who Knows all about It
They said I have WMDs, though hunger, that unwelcomed guest,
For many nights, over my weary eyes sings its mournful dirge.
At every dawn, it wakes me up and stays beside me on my pillow,
Not to wipe my tears away, but to listen to my sighs and prayers.
Many tears did I shed to bother it, to forget it, to ignore it.
Yet, it never left, as if it has fallen in love with me.
So, I decided to return its love, for my illiterate mother once
Told me that the equation of life will always be love
Thus, I learnt to count love with everything I see and do.
I learnt to see it in the wet fields that I roamed barefooted,
In the singing of the little sparrows swinging on the wet boughs,
In the sun rays that the clouds and the leaves bathe in.
But, alas! I soon forgot my mother's equation, for the many fighter
Jets hid the complexion of the sun, the many laser-guided smart
Bombs and the many Humvees, tanks and troops
Drew the earth's wrinkles, plunging our green fields
Into darkness, turning our playgrounds into deep pits of hell
Where I saw bodies blown in the black flare like dandelions in a storm.
I've seen death posing with naked bodies and corpses,
Marching, like a tyrant, the deserted streets with its mouth
Full of obscenities and lies, searching for pupils on their way
To school, or worshippers kneeling down in the House of God.
Many times did I try to learn my mother's equation once more,
But she was not there to teach me. There she is, in her grave,
dead with my kisses still over her cheeks, and those two holes
One in her forehead, the other in her heart, those two holes which
the Democratic machine gun of a cowardly sniper of the devil's legion
made for the earth and the worms to engulf the equation of love.