An excerpt from the diary of an Iraqi child

Written in January '05, my impression of a child who witnessed the Iraq war 

                       Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

               Tears from the depth of some divine despair

               Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes,

               In looking on the happy autumn fields,

               And thinking of the days that are no more. (Tennyson)

Days that may never return, people that I have lost forever, my faith which has completely abandoned me and my God who I believe was never there. It is as if my body is empty and is being devoured, every bit of it being eaten alive from within. Autumn fields surround me, fields filled with yellow and orange and scarlet, colors that have become the crux of my existence. I no longer observe things, I blankly stare and gaze and with my eyes alone, I believe, I can rip apart the ‘soul of the world’.

With a twig in my hand, I impetuously scrape the hardened surface on which I rest, and half way through digging a hole, as several feet walk by, I give my neck the honor of craning and my mouth the honor of gaping and my soul the honor of shedding a few more ‘idle tears’, for a coffin rests on the shoulders of these feet. I look back at how deep my twig has ventured and suddenly realize that what I had been doing rather aimlessly might just serve a purpose. When every bit of this barren land will have a body to its name, someone will thank me for having already dug their grave for them. The feet disappeared in a matter of seconds for these men had other dead spirits to shoulder, that is, in addition to their own.

As I observed my reflection at the bottom of my food bowl, I could see tears brimming over my eyelids, tears that failed to roll down for lack of meaning and yet, after what seemed like a lifetime, I smiled. I did not recognize what I was doing or what I meant but it was probably because while those feet had a body to shoulder, I had only ashes. Cold, gray, flimsy, ashes. I had ran around the quarters of the Red Cross, or at least what remained of them, and  had gathered every bit  of ash that smelt of my mother, or so I’d like to believe. For with each one that I enclosed in my fist, I could feel her warmth surround me. I knew I had identified them correctly, I couldn’t have gone wrong.

Some more feet passed by, but this time I did not look up and as more ‘idle’ tears burst from within, oblivion shrank like a thing reproved.