An Iraqi Poet

The next evening, Wednesday the 19th, I watched a documentary called About Baghdad, which was shot in the summer of 2003 by an exiled Iraqi poet and writer named Sinan Antoon. Before the showing, Sinan gave a talk about how the prose poem was not allowed to flourish under the Baathist regime, nor any kind of dissenting literature, even though poetry was the highest form of discourse in Iraq. Like Stalin, Saddam had a very short rope, and the Iraqi people’s boiling resentment of him was a revolution waiting to happen.

There was, in fact, a US-encouraged revolt shortly after Saddam was defeated in the First Gulf War, in which 16 out of 18 provinces in Iraq fell from Saddam’s power. But just when it seemed like Saddam would fall, General Schwarzkopf allowed Saddam to fly his helicopter gunships through U.S. lines—knowing full well that they would be used to strafe Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north in order to put down the rebellion.

The killing spree resulted in mass graves which the U.S. often refers to as evidence of Saddam’s depravity—never mentioning that we allowed and encouraged it to happen. The rebels, the men and women who put their life on the line to oust the hated dictator as the U.S. had encouraged them to do, were betrayed.

Our reasons for crushing a promising revolt against Saddam? According to former CIA director James Woolsey, “I think it was a question of believing it was better to bear those ills you have than fly to others you know not of. Better the devil you know, I think. They were too worried about instability when they should have been worried about what was going to happen if they got the reputation of being weak and leaving Saddam in place.”

Funny, I thought they claimed to be worried about the Iraqi people.

Regarding potential armed revolts, Sinan said that a smarter regime, such as Syria, has a longer rope. It allows dissenting poems and plays to be published and performed far and wide. In fact, anything goes as long as there is no organized, armed resistance. Literature functions as a release valve so that people can pour their efforts into it instead of into forceful resistance and boiling resentment.

I thought those playwrights must feel pretty silly acting as release valves and actually strengthening their government’s stranglehold on power. And the following poem sprang to mind:

The smart regime
has a very long rope
so that we can walk
all over the yard
and pretend like we are free.
They let us march,
protest and publish,
debate and discuss,
all weekend long.
Drunk on self-satisfaction,
we pretend we are agents for change.

But nothing changes.

Their words and weapons drown us
like children in a tidal wave.
The thousand million dreams die
in ceaseless streams
while we drink coffee,
make nice posters,
and congratulate ourselves.

I read an interview with Sinan later in which he said that he left Iraq to escape Saddam’s huge prison. He kept abreast of the news as best he could, but it was still shocking to follow the descent of his country. It was awful to see all the destruction, not just of all that Iraq had built physically, but of the social fabric of Iraq as well. The destruction of Iraqi society has gone on for a long time, started by Saddam as he was aided by the U.S. in the 1980’s. But the crucial factor was the 13 years of sanctions. Those horrible years drove Iraq to the edge. The ongoing war is just the final blow.

He visited his country in the middle of the newest occupation in 2003, and he was very depressed to see how destroyed the Iraqi people are. They are resilient, and want to rebuild the country, but people are seriously drained, both physically and spiritually. The core of the society, the intelligentsia, the middle class, that was supposed to rebuild Iraq, is completely destroyed.

Sinan said when his documentary team entered Iraq from Jordan, only a lone patrolman was guarding the border. If his team had wanted to, they could have gone around easy enough. He said, “You wonder where all these insurgents and mercenaries are coming from. But nobody’s even guarding the borders.”

He spent three weeks in Baghdad, interviewing Iraqis from all walks of life and asking them how they felt about the legacy of living under Saddam’s dictatorship and going through three wars and sanctions, and how they feel about the U.S. As expected, their results were far more complicated than what the Bush administration wants us to believe—that all Iraqis are either Saddam-lovers or America-lovers.

One Iraqi reminded the interviewer of the fact that in 1921, British Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude also came to Baghdad and said, “Our armies do not come as conquerors, but as liberators.”

Another said that he blamed Saddam first for their troubles. Second the Arab states for not breaking economic and political ties even though they knew what the Iraqis were enduring under Saddam’s regime. And third he blamed the rest of the world for standing by for so long.

Some Iraqis said that they really did appreciate when somebody from the West, well-armed and well-fed, actually tried to offer them some police security in an unstable and insecure time and place. They did appreciate people like Ronan, who were there to make a bad situation a little better, to do something towards helping clean up a festering shit storm, as Ronan would say, that they did not create.

But the Iraqis also understood that it was just individuals who came honestly to help, and their governments did not much care. I think Ronan understood that, too.

Another man said America could come if they wanted, and take half the oil even. They were welcome to it. If the Iraqi people got 50% of their nation’s wealth, it would be an improvement over Saddam, who took 95% and left only 5% for the people. Sinan said that the tragedy was that America was taking even more. Under Saddam at least they had social service, health care, water, sewage treatment, libraries… America destroyed so much, and we haven’t rebuilt anything. We didn’t even bother to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, which any smart occupier would attempt to do.

Sinan said it was racist for the Bush Administration to believe that the Iraqis as a people would be gullible enough to believe anything the Americans threw at them. He said one of the ironies of life is that living under a totalitarian system teaches one always to question governmental discourse and consider what governments say suspect until proven otherwise.

The people who are doing the suffering can usually see a little clearer than the well-fed, contented folks who are making the policies that cause them to suffer, not to mention the people living in well-fed countries who have only a passing interest in the news. The Iraqis had no choice in the matter of whether they were invaded, and they hoped for the best, but America betrayed them again. And now many Iraqis will fight until they die.

That reminded me of what Scott had written from Iraq:

I think the perception in the States is that we have this conflict under control. We don’t. What the photos that came out about abuses in Abu Ghraib mean is that anyone who was partial to the Coalition forces are becoming hostile. They burn US, British and UN flags on a daily basis. I think it would have broke Ronan’s heart to see the people he was trying to protect burn his precious UN flag. Saddam’s forces are getting stronger as our will to fight gets weaker. Sometimes I think of something Ronan said: ‘We are supporting another Saddam in Washington, but he is far stronger.’

Ronan fought for freedom. For the freedom to go to the ‘pub and get a beer’ and feel safe. For the right to feel safe. The problem is, no side in this conflict offers that security.

This is a sandy Vietnam. We are losing this war…

In the course of his film, Sinan was shown in Iraq reading one of his poems:

Wars I

when i was torn by war
i took a brush
immersed in death
and drew a window
on war’s wall
i opened it
searching for
something
But
i saw another war
and a mother
weaving a shroud
for the dead man
still in her womb

After the film was over I requested a copy of his poem, and asked if I could use it in a tribute I was making for a friend who had recently died in Iraq. He asked about my friend, and I told him a little: that he was a UN Ranger, one of my best friends, and he didn’t agree with the war but was there to do what he could. Sinan said of course I could use his poem.

As we parted he said, “I’m very sorry about your friend who died.”

I nodded, choked up that a man who had lost tens of thousands of his countrymen could find sympathy for a UN soldier. I said with a shaky voice, “A lot of people have died.”

“We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call ‘Native Americans.’ How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.”

~Kurt Vonnegut, Cold Turkey

That night, thinking about Ronan and his life of service, I thought, why did he have to die? Why did he have to serve? If the world is as savage and ruthless as it seems to be, what is the point in trying? Why not just take the desk job, live in comfort, and watch the news on TV instead of jumping in the middle of it?

The following spilled out unbidden, seemingly as an answer:

If all we ever do
is try to save ourselves,
maybe we deserve no other fate
than oppression and death.

Unilateral disengagement
from dim, joyless selfishness
gives our whole world
the shining chance
to redeem ourselves
and fulfill our promise.

No other honor
or elevation
of soul and body
can touch the warm inner stillness
of giving yourself
to something bigger, smarter, and stronger
than your mind, your will, or your passion:
    your heart
and the Heart of all life.

I seem to have caught a kind of poetical diarrhea in the days after Ronan died. The next one went:

Life is mostly
savage emptiness
unless we try to figure out
and follow impulses
that lead us to peace
and communion.
But even if we do—
If no one else does,
it’s just a knife in our tender hearts
forever.

Oh God!
Why do we get caught up
in the vortex
of death
and redemption,
tragedy
and justice,
when we could just be about nothing?

But then
such as we
would already
be dead.
You and I
will laugh all our laughter
and cry all our tears
and live forever
in each moment
we are given.

On Friday of that week, the Coalition for Justice, a Palestinian advocacy group at Stanford, organized a vigil in White Plaza for the victims of the Israeli shelling of a group of peaceful protestors in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. At least nineteen were killed and dozens more wounded. The UN human rights special envoy in Palestine and other prominent humanitarian organization called the attacks a war crime. I personally think all aggressive acts of murder are a crime, but the UN thought this one was particularly bad.

We laid a Palestinian flag down with flowers and candles around it, and stood in a circle sharing words and information and some moments of silence for those and other victims around the world.

Biking back from it, a car honked at me for jaywalking, and I laughed. I thought, with all the murder and rage going on in the world, why are you bothering me about a crosswalk sign in Palo Alto?

I tried to get an inkling of the feelings of the Gazans based on my own awful feelings. They have lost, and continue to lose, so much more than I ever willin terms of homes, dignity, friends and family members, and for much worse reasons than their choice to serve. They have no choice. They are bombed in their homes, shot in the streets, held up at checkpoints to die of easily treatable ailments and injuries, imprisoned and tortured.

I tried to imagine if I had lost three or four friends and family members, and my home on top of it. I tried to multiply my own feelings by ten or twenty or a hundred. It didn’t compute. I wrote:

I laugh
at the car
honking at me
and say,
“Do you think I care
if you run over me?”

I laugh
at the soldier
yelling at me
and say,
“Do you think I care
if you shoot me?”

I laugh
because I have nothing left
except to laugh
and to die.

I had a tiny fear that some of my Arab, Muslim and activist friends, most of whom deplored the war in Iraq, would not understand or find much sympathy for me or my friend. These fears fell flat in about six seconds. Every one of them was kind, supportive, and sympathetic. Many of them know better than most what war and violence are like.

A Muslim friend from Lebanon encouraged me not to despair, but keep up hope and keep fighting. He said Ronan was killed in the path of God in a noble act of sacrifice helping a child and supporting human justice all over the world, and thus he is a hero and a martyr, and martyrs come second after the prophets. God willing, he and I will meet again in Paradise.

He read my poem and said it made him sad because the world seemed darker, and life seemed trivial, but that was wrong. He believed in eternal justice, and if the murderers and aggressors get away with it in this life, that doesn’t mean they won’t be punished; God extends but never neglects. Righteous acts will be rewarded.

He told me to keep on through the highs and lows and never despair or lose hope. One of the hadiths of the Prophet said that if the day of judgment came and you saw all the horrors coming, and imminent death approaching, and if you had a baby palm tree in your hand, you should still plant it. Never fall into despair and hopelessness even ‘til the end.

He offered the Palestinians as an example of a people who keep up hope despite tragedy after tragedy for the past fifty years. They are still living, still getting married and having children, still looking for a better tomorrow, if not for them, for their children; if not for their children, for their children’s children. He told me to take heart in their example and be proud and strong.

I’m not a religious person in the organized sense, but his words comforted me. He found honor and respect for a man whom he could easily have classified as a foreign occupier and dismissed. He recognized my friend’s humanity and welcomed him as a hero and a man who fought for justice no matter whose colors he wore. All who honestly seek truth and peace and justice, he reminded me, are on the same side.

Every time I saw a friend during the next two weeks, I had to tell them that a friend of mine they didn’t know had died in Iraq. I didn’t realize how much I talked about him until I saw their reactions. They would say they were sorry and ask if he was from Oklahoma, and I would say, no, he was from Ireland. Then a horrible light would dawn in their eyes, and they would say, “Oh my god, that guy? Jesus, Pam, I’m so sorry.”

I was especially surprised when an acquaintance of mine named Angie, whom I hadn’t seen in a year, had a similar reaction. I asked her in surprise, “You know who I’m talking about?”

She said, “Yeah, you were talking about him last spring when we had pizza that one time. We all remembered because your eyes were all… sparkling.”

Joy and Sorrow
from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping
for that which has been your delight.

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