We multiply by a bomb
Then we bear another.
We drag our children into passport documents.
We multiply far from the bedroom
And spit on our wedding day -
never paying attention to the tears.
On the TV screen
Baghdad storms us with bridges
Carnage of the Al Hadidi* fell in the Tigris -
It disappeared, taking refuge in the gulf
And I became a refugee on buses and newspapers.
I shake
At the first border check point
And I shake
When I hear the news
And I shake
Is there a lorry big enough for me,
For a passer by,
Who exchanged the capital of Al Rashid with a sea?
We’re farther from the wheels of the Mongols,
The black tea
And the darkness of Baghdad.
But the newsreader
Was still shooting at us with his news
While smiling.
* * * * *
The strangers
Ask me about the war.
No one asked me about the shrapnel that blasted the window,
The wardrobe where my dreams had heaped
Amongst metallic coins.
* * * * *
Baghdad
Is climbing another graveyard,
And I am like a cigarette between two fingers,
Standing far from her walls
Vomiting my dreams on a pavement in Damascus -
The smell old friends.
Friends who’re working in deception with joy
And the papers urinated on others.
Is homeland a terrace on a tanker
that treads on my dreams everyday
On Al Rashid street?
Or is homeland a dynamite freight
That brings joy to the children?
Jebla / Al Latheqiya 2007
* Al Hadidi: is the bridge of Sarrafiya in Baghdad. It was made of metal and was bombed in 2007.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem