Ahmed speaks
Amman, Jordan December, 2006
I want to show you something.
My left ear does not work
thanks to a car bomb,
and my right eye
thanks to a metal fragment lodged in its cornea.
Day and night, an echo of that bomb
rings in my ear --
not an ocean crashing or a river
carrying its musical load of rock and stone,
not a wind sighing or shrieking,
not two-year-old Abdullah calling from infested Baghdad,
but the voice of a bomb
in my ear,
and in my eye, one of its ten thousand teeth.
But that is not what I want to show you.
That is only the surface, moving downriver,
only a reflection of Baghdad today.
I want to show unchanging depths,
past, present, future bundled in the immutable
body of the river.
For that, you must look at my hand
and take it
and come with us to dinner
and eat shawarma.
Laugh with us.
Talk with us.
Think with us, habibi,
about how to extract the worm
eating the heart of my country.
If Irony Were Justice
Blood at the Wrist
First Day in Amman
Thay Reach Us
I was the Earth
Ammar's Story
