Just bones.
That’s all they are finding.
Just bones.
The collection has begun.
The accounting of horrors.
The tally of the dead
Unearthed by the thousands.
It is a ponderous task.
There are so many.
And these are only the bodies
They have been able to find.
How many others will spend eternity
Trapped beneath this rocky soil,
With no one to weep over them?
My friends and countrymen,
Women and children,
They are all just bones now.
All met the same fate.
No mercy was shown,
Not even for the little ones.
Today, I held a tiny skull in my hand.
There was a hole in it
Where the bullet had entered.
What could a child do to deserve such a fate?
How can men do such things?
What could a child ever do?
All that they were,
All that they might become,
Just bones.
Remnants of lives.
Bones, as dry as this desert.
How could these empty skulls have held so much?
So much love?
So much hope?
So much fear?
What terrible sights did these hollow eyes witness
In the final moments?
And somewhere, among them all,
Lies my love,
Gone now for seventeen years.
Seventeen years.
I will never love another.
Her skin was so smooth.
Her hair was so soft.
Her smile was so warm.
They came and took her one night
And I never saw her again.
How will I find her?
How will I find her here
Among all this human wreckage?
Some say the outsiders don’t belong in our country.
I don’t know about politics.
I am a simple man.
I only know that my love is gone forever
And now, the people who took her from me
Will finally pay for what they have done.
And this dry earth
That has held her for so long
Can finally receive my tears.
1. I wrote this about two years after the liberation of Iraq when they were discovering the true extent of Hussein's atrocities, digging up thousands of bodies in mass graves around Iraq. It was inspired by a story I read by a man whose wife disappeared because Hussein took a shine to her. He and his cronies would often kidnap women and use them for sex, then dump them on the street where they would be considered dishonored and forced to become prostitutes to survive. Others were just killed outright and buried in the desert.
2. Mark Rickerby - real name and screen name.
3. My poems are usually based on my own experience. This one marked the first in many where I'm writing from another person's perspective. I found it liberating and heartbreaking at the same time. I have found that putting myself into the mind of someone who has suffered something beyond my comprehension is the best way to increase compassion.
Everything below this point was written when this was first posted.
Because a few people have mistakenly assumed this was written in the first person, it is not. It is written from an Iraqi man's point of view searching for a loved one lost in the Kurdish massacre by Hussein in 1988.
Another favorite pasttime of Hussein and his sons was abducting women they found attractive. ("Kidnap" would not be the right word because they were above the law. In fact, there was no law other than their own moment-to-moment whims.) They would keep these women at their palaces as sex slaves. When they were bored with them, they would either kill them or throw them out on the street again. Hundreds of women disappeared this way during the 30 years of Hussein's reign.
The photograph is one of Hussein's many mass graves. For more photos of Hussein's atrocities, visit http://www.9neesan.com/massgraves/
Here are some messages from our friends here that bear repeating -
"This is so touching and sad. I'm sure that many of the Iraqi people feel this way. When this war started, I thought it was completely senseless and that America needed to worry about itself and not everyone else, but now I see that I was just being biased because I didn't want Paul to go. I have read so many stories of people who have felt closure, been helped, and been saved by American soldiers being over there that I cannot say that it is senseless. They deserve to be free and feel justice just as much as we do and they could not get out from under him without the help of America."
- SharonLynn
"25,000 children under the age of 5 died each year of hunger under Hussein's rule. Thousands were placed in mass graves, other thousands sent to torture chambers and yet no one speaks of this. On the other site I moderate, I asked the protesters "Then you would prefer that the children keep dying, right?". They have no answer to that. There are protests all over the world but you won't find an Iraqi taking part in them. They understand, and appreciate, what has been done for them. As you say, NO ONE should be forced to live - and die - that way."
- Balladeer
"The reality and cruel reality at that is that this piece could just as easily relate to the inhumanity in Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia, East Timor, Tibet, Chechnya, Balkans, from the purges of Stalin, the atrocities of Hitler and the cruelty perpetrated by the Japanese army in World War Two as it relates to the killings of Saddam Hussein. The reference will date a message that is timeless and an enemy that is universal."
- D.P. Robertson
Written April 11th, 2005
Honorable winner
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