Lefteast
“Iraq’s night is long Dawn breaks only to the murdered praying half a prayer and never finishing a greeting to anyone.” –Mahmoud Darwish (Tr. Sinan Antoon) In a moment impregnated with the weight of a murdered world, Gaza is being martyred in the dark.[i] She ascends as my heart descends in a familiar abyss. Long […]
The night’s last cigarette dies on the asphalt. Here, at a monument memorializing a Marine Corps triumph over my ancestors, I trek to a thicket of trees, retreat to the folds of darkness, and see the nightlights of Washington DC dance to my solitude in the distance. A vista unlike that monotonous cityscape of Baghdad: […]
Four men lie dead before me tonight. Their faces are pixelated on my screen. There is blood on their garments, on their skin, on the parched soil where their corpses are dumped. Their mouths open in a moment of silence, and there are boots in a corner. Twenty years ago in March 2003, our cries […]