20: Abraham The Ruin
I am wearing my nice coat made of father's saddle blankets. Nooda was
just here. Her voice is hanging! Ibrahim run she says,
there is Aya, Li, Uri,
Bassel, Elias: the children. Everything is in
dust
vapors
She must be here somewhere.
I remember my father said he could always feel my mother after the war,
around the camp
she remained; in Germany she was forever dust and vapors.
The vapors rested upon him.
The dust he breathed in.
But of my sisters, my brother, there was always nothing,
silence and cold; dead
surrounding me; her voice again, distant and buried! Ibrahim, please run.
Here, I know
she must be, where she just hung her words
off the brandy red of my coat, how it turns,
she said,
the caramel soak of my eyes into morning
coffee and sunshine, cardamom, rose water and saffron, into awaking.
The red I wear is awaking.
When I first heard them coming, when I heard
the large sounds as they hit
I thought earthquake. It was not; but it is the same. Earth quakes.
And now, I see Nooda can only be gone. What can she be
but rubble? The air that holds hope has gone unfed for a long time
and her echo has died
in it. She no longer tells me or asks me to run. And they come
once again upon the sky
like termites, trickling, unseen, destructive
bugs; they come
cut the sky wide;
wide open
under cover
of the night, we ran; with the school children we scurried house to house like
mice fleeing a giant foot,
babies surrounding them, the foot such an intimate,
disgusting weapon. Around
a wall we rested as buildings laid down to the sounds,
until morning
when
engines whipped thousands of revolutions per minute into firm peaks
of roar and
the clouds, so innocent, coming with
a gentle breeze like God's peace in the distance; above,
a buzz that stops, challenges my perception,
kneecaps my interest and drops it to worry,
approaches steadily,
like any plague, spreads,
blankets all directions, sharpens
a thick knife to
cut the world
wide, wide open.
I can search no longer.
There are the children in pieces, and Nooda
may have escaped. So
just as I move I feel gone, my dust and vapors, my coat so red,
Nooda over me.
This is over, ending; as you read
I ran into this moment, but it is not mine. In these words I am
so present I can taste my death, smell its metal. It is awaking. A flavor,
spreading
through the atmosphere and
because of my distance or my blood, my language or my culture, or
my argument and belief,
you cannot feel
me;
I am only these words to speak of now. My eyes do not reflect
in your awaking
but I am there
if you rise.
Nooda can still run, but does so no longer. With me, these words;
the city lies down
like the most tired body ever seen. Aleppo:
please read no more, it says, let me go. Find the others,
ashes