this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war
we love and support our troops, just as we love and support the Iraqi people – without exception, or precondition, or judgment
we have no sympathy for the devil
image and poem below the fold
An Iraqi inspects a body of one of the victims in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006. At least four civilians were killed in drive by shooting in different parts of Baqouba.
(AP Photo/Mohammed Adnan)
Those Graves in Rome
by Larry Levis
There are places where the eye can starve,
But not here. Here, for example, is
The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow room
Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of sunbathing
Tourists. And here is the Protestant Cemetery
Where Keats & Joseph Severn join hands
Forever under a little shawl of grass
And where Keats’ name isn’t even on
His gravestone, because it is on Severn’s,
And Joseph Severn’s infant son is buried
Two modest, grassy steps behind them both.
But you’d have to know the story–how bedridden
Keats wanted the inscription to be
Simple, & unbearable: “Here lies one
Whose name is writ in water.” On a warm day,
I stood here with my two oldest friends.
I thought, then, that the three of us would be
Indissoluble at the end, & also that
We would all die, of course. And not die.
And maybe we should have joined hands at that
Moment. We didn’t. All we did was follow
A lame man in a rumpled suit who climbed
A slight incline of graves blurring into
The passing marble of other graves to visit
The vacant home of whatever is not left
Of Shelley & Trelawney. That walk uphill must
Be hard if you can’t walk. At the top, the man
Wheezed for breath; sweat beaded his face,
And his wife wore a look of concern so
Habitual it seemed more like the way
Our bodies, someday, will have to wear stone.
Later that night, the three of us strolled,
Our arms around each other, through the Via
Del Corso & toward the Piazza di Espagna
As each street grew quieter until
Finally we heard nothing at the end
Except the occasional scrape of our own steps,
And so we said good-bye. Among such friends,
Who never allowed anything, still alive,
To die, I’d almost forgotten that what
Most people leave behind them disappears.
Three days later, staying alone in a cheap
Hotel in Naples, I noticed a child’s smeared
Fingerprints on a bannister. It
Had been indifferently preserved beneath
A patina of varnish applied, I guessed, after
The last war. It seemed I could almost hear
His shout, years later, on that street. But this
Is speculation, & no doubt the simplest fact
Could shame me. Perhaps the child was from
Calabria, & went back to it with
A mother who failed to find work, & perhaps
The child died there, twenty years ago,
Of malaria. It was so common then–
The children crying to the doctors for quinine.
It was so common you did not expect an aria,
And not much on a gravestone, either–although
His name is on it, & weathered stone still wears
His name–not the way a girl might wear
The too large, faded blue workshirt of
A lover as she walks thoughtfully through
The Via Fratelli to buy bread, shrimp,
And wine for the evening meal with candles &
The laughter of her friends, & later the sweet
Enkindling of desire; but something else, something
Cut simply in stone by hand & meant to last
Because of the way a name, any name,
Is empty. And not empty. And almost enough.
– – –
Ali Abbas decided that his upper right thigh was the best place for a tattoo because no one gets tortured there.
He’d seen hundred of bodies in the city morgue and dozens of hospitals during his 18-day search for his missing uncle. He’d seen drill marks in swollen, often unrecognizable heads, slash marks across necks, bullet holes in backs, abdomens and swollen hands. He’d seen bodies that had been thrown into the river, so swollen they’d barely looked human. But by and large, the thighs had been intact.
So that’s where he decided to have his name, address and phone number tattooed, in case the day comes when someone is searching for his body.
Tattoos are considered a sin in Islam, which holds that believers shouldn’t deface their bodies. And tattoo shops are difficult to find in Baghdad. They’re often in the basements of more reputable shops.
But at least some tattoo shops are seeing more and more Iraqis who, like Abbas, are willing to risk offending Islam to ease their families’ grief in the event of their deaths. The owner of one tattoo shop in central Baghdad admitted that he’d done such tattoos, but said he didn’t want to talk about it for fear that he’d be killed.
That some Muslims are getting tattoos is an intimate reflection of national chaos, and an outward symbol of the inner turmoil the chaos has created.
from“These tattoos aren’t artful – they help identify Iraq’s dead” by Nancy A. Youssef writing for McClatchy Newspapers
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