FALEEHA HASSAN

FALEEHA HASSAN

MY HOME IS CONTAMINATED BY THE WAR

We were like a night

That had lost her light;

We wore our distress,

Split by grief

War veterans….

Moving between the blows of history

Without any glimmer of victory,

And we became addicted exiles,

Jumping between fragments, Searching for a thread of hope….

Our land is not for us,

Not even our blood.

Our fatalities alternate

Between the fingers of the tyrants.

We, Southerners,

Are busy preparing ourselves for departure;

Horrific fantasies colonize

Our dreams instead of spring trees

This is a time of war-storms.

All roads are barren

Every street is hit by a drought;

But we are still walking

And just keep on walking….

You can clearly see

Our footprints on the desert.

CREDIBLE LIES

Oh, Faleeha,

How brilliant is your future?

I whisper into my ear

And pat myself on the shoulder.

Every morning,

I start my day with a big lie That I tell myself….

Faleeha:

Leave the news to the promoters of rumors

Houses being bombed by skilled pilots will be rebuilt immediately afterward

Leave Iraqi women-for sale in the Sbaya Bazaar in Mosul

Mothers will give birth to new daughters nine months later

Don’t worry about the man who sells his life for a handful of coins under the sweltering sun

One day, he will get a Chinese umbrella

Don’t worry about your niece whose face is now being eaten by skin cancer

She will get photoshopped and receive

A beautiful profile picture for her Facebook page;

Why do you keep looking at the picture of your friend who has been missing since the Kuwaiti war?

He is lucky!

He survived the darkness of a grave!

Oh, Faleeha,

Leave the children of Baghdad to wake up to violent explosions

Music is no longer fit for their mornings

Write down the martyrs’ names on a piece of a paper

And place it in your old coat and leave it in the closet

Or send it to the dry cleaners..

I’m tired of counting the names of the martyrs.

Besides, the war never ends

Faleeha,

Don’t plan for the future!

It is as a close as a sniper’s bullet.

Yes,

I begin each day with a big, Big, big lie.

No lie, however,

Can cover the chilling truth…

. . WHEN I HEAR SIRENS

I remember…

Like birds afraid of their feathers catching fire,

We would rush to hide

Whenever we heard the sirens

My little sister's voice would hit the walls of the room.

She would scream: “Hold me!"

As she stood frozen in her place

And her eyes sank into a sea of fear

Words would burst out of my tongue….

We would run toward our mom, holding her hands tightly,

And our whole little world would begin to shake

From the roars of the fighter planes.

I thank the sirens a lot now,

Every time I hear them

They remind me of the scent of my mother's hands,

When she was trying hard to strengthen our thin roots.

FALEEHA HASSAN