As I lay Face Down

First, the dark wet dirt, the hint of ammonia, reminded…
It was why I was there, face down…this dirt…my dirt…my land

The stench of red…was that blood from my nose?
I remembered Jasim’s ‘shaved-off’ nipples at Abu-Ghraib…

Far away, Fatima’s face was crying…
Mohamed, tugging at her nipple, will surely miss me…

This foreign sole of a ‘made-in the US/China-Manufactured’ now familiar boot
had kicked this dust into my eye…Was that my blood from my eye?

The circular edge of his crushing iron weapon reminded…
Rancid sweat…I could smell it again…and again…

The journey has been long…it may have now come to an end…

In the eighties, they told us that our enemies had arrived from the East…
I sat, well into the nights, at the gates,
translating ‘made-in-the US’ manuals on war…

We had to protect our next of kin, our Arab brethren,
those in 'Aagaals', from the Yellow Winds…
Some people said it was not about winds…
They said it was to protect this dirt…and all that lay underneath the dirt…

Then there was the big WAR, and the rubber from our torn boots trailed
in the sand to the South…
They pushed and pushed us further down…
towards the waters of the Gulf…but we never saw water…

For fourteen days, I broke pieces of the molded bread they had thrown weeks before,
and made my meal…
Tarik, who couldn’t…just wouldn’t…
Well, he made his last bed there in the trench…

Then the shells showered our tracks in the sunlight…
And I wondered…if Tarik had gone the easy way…
When my sweat prints wet the rusted gates of Baghdad…
my eyes had gone to my feet for the first time since we drifted North,
…my small toe was gone…

Fatima did not seem to mind
…this missing piece…;
Ahmed had not yet arrived …

He did when The Starvation began…
For 12 long years it ran...
His big eyes: all the interrogation an infant could muster…
I prayed that Fatima’s breasts would not betray him…
I prayed he would not bloat like the rest, his age…
I prayed…

And now this dirt…in my face…
and the iron depression on my neck…
The foreign boot digging into my back
the man above me, screaming with fright!
His words as alien as his eyes…

Where did they come from?
Why have they come?
For this dirt…or what lies underneath this dirt…
But we were supposed to protect it…

Jasim came home to die…

Will they bring what’s left of me, home to die?
Who will tell Fatima?
Who will tell Fatima…?
Who will tell Fatima?….

The Story of an Iraqi soldier/citizen...