My Dear Reader,
How am I to tell you this with pitiful nouns and verbs—
when your own limbs are more articulate
and pronounced? Rendered foreign to those who render,
these limbs have been compartmentalized and
re-organized, and sterilized and buried.
But your grave remains my bones!
Reader, I want to make you understand.
I want to master the word. The most persuasive argument I can
conjure. The most eloquent poem that will change your mind about me.
Change my mind about me.
I don’t know how or why, but the odds have always been stacked against us.
Somehow, the rules of this game always change.
And I begin to think I am the perpetrator.
But how can that be when I am you?
And eloquence?! It is a tongue that has forsaken me.
How do I speak against the language of annihilation?
It multiplies and morphs and deceives in ways my dialect cannot match.
Reader, to whom do I speak?
When it is to them: I speak in alien whispers.
How can the mind fathom that which has not been awakened in its body?
A cataclysmic treasure remains docile—for now—deep within its folds.
When it is to you: Do my brows not betray me?
Does my shaking chin not give way to overflowing seas and rivers,
ones I have attempted to blockade since the first child lost his leg? Do I
not reach for my own leg and rub an invisible wound? Does my knee
not tingle when you take hold of your make-do crutches?
Reader, I ache.
But on which frequency does my cry reach yours?
How does my voice meet yours when yours is a
scream—a routine, quotidian and immense?
And I know that when you wail, it is a whale that swallows all other sounds.
I am Jonas. I stand no chance.
My ears ring, and I rub them to stall the cacophony of blasts.
But it is no use! I have now come to know your name and
face. Your brown eyes seek me out. I see your eyes in mine.
My eyes are yours. Take them!
Reader, I carry you with me.
You are here as much as you are in the tent.
In the unmarked cemetery. Under the rubble.
In your half-demolished dwelling.
But let me assure you—you are not light.
Indeed, I am heavy-footed because your foot lay on mine.
My leg and knee and toes work the earth the way they do—without rhythm or
rhyme—because your leg, the one that you lost, is also housed in mine.
And when I point a finger for whatever reason, I see your nail.
The grey dirt underneath. The brittle tip.
And when I look at my palm, I see the 99 names of God and you.
Tell me, how did your nose become my thumb?
Reader,
I have not abandoned you, for how can I when you are me?
Reader,
quite simply and most directly, I yearn for your peace.
Reader,
I yearn for your peace (and mine).
Shurouq Ibrahim