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إعداد : غابة الدندنة | ||||
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يرجى ذكر المصدر عند الاقتباس | ||||
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القرآن الكريم لا يعذر الإرهاب :
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 15:33:42 -0700 (PDT) Ginny | ||||
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إذا أردنا أن
نفهم الوجه الحقيقي للإرهاب نحن يجب أن ننظر في المرآة : From: Chris
Brandt SOME THOUGHTS IN THE AFTERMATH | ||||
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الفيتو
الأمريكي ضد الفلسطينيين وعدم التحرك ولو بالإدانة اللفظية ولد إحباطاً : Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 12:41:26 -0700 (PDT) Dear Chris, I am British, but have lived and worked in Egypt and I, like many
others,have been deeply saddened by the recent events. I also fear the
reprisals and what that will mean long term. I thought your message was
one of great clarity, and with what you have recently experienced, a very
rational and fair appraisal of the situation. I only hope that others,
especially those who are in power, will share your outlook and look for a
peaceful outcome to this situation. There is so much injustice in this world and I don't believe we
will ever know what really lay behind the horrendous attack on the
American people, but I do know of the frustration felt by the people of
the Middle East concerning American policy in regard to this area and the
arbitary use of the veto in the UN which has so often robbed the
Palestinians of even a verbal condemnation on the attacks and occupation
of their territories. Please do not feel this is an attempt to justify
what happened on September 11th, nothing
can ever justify that action.
I feel manipulated by the media and politicians and don't know what
is 'right' or 'wrong' anymore. In my little sphere I have wonderful
friends who do their utmost for one another and try to extend a helping
hand to support each other. I can only hope there are enough people out
there who share their caring nature so this talk of another World War will
stop. Let's hope there can be a new understanding of 'different' cultures
and beliefs and that they need not be a threat to each other so that
something positive can come from this act of carnage against those
innocent victims in New York. Thank you and God bless your kindness and understanding Margaret | ||||
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يتكلمون عن
العدالة ويفكرون بالقنابل : Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 20:21:49 -0700 (PDT) Chris, Susanna Lang | ||||
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· رؤية عسكرية : أسامة بن لادن ليس
سهلاً .. وأعداؤنا في عشرين دولة يرغبون في الموت حتى الرجل الأخير.
[ إنه
يقصدنا نحن العرب وافرحتاه .. Subject: Military view
Dear friends and fellow Americans
14 September, 2001 These men hate the United States with all of their being, and we
must not underestimate the power of their moral commitment. Napoleon,
perhaps the world's greatest combination of soldier and statesman, stated
"the moral is to the physical as three is to one." Patton thought the
Frenchman underestimated its importance and said moral conviction was five
times more important in battle than physical
strength. Our enemies are willing - better
said anxious -- to give their lives for their cause. How committed are we, America? And for how long? In addition to demonstrating great moral conviction, the recent
attack demonstrated a mastery of some of the basic fundamentals of warfare
taught to most military officers worldwide, namely simplicity, security
and surprise. When I first heard rumors that some of these men may have
been trained at our own Air War College, it made perfect sense to me. This
was not a random act of violence, and we can expect the same sort of
military competence to be displayed in the battle to
come. This war will escalate, with a good
portion of it happening right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. These men will not go easily into the night. They do not fear us.
We must not fear them.
In spite of our overwhelming conventional strength as the world's
only "superpower" (a truly silly term), we
are the underdog in this fight. As you listen to the carefully scripted
rhetoric designed to prepare us for the march for war, please realize that
America is not equipped or seriously trained for the battle ahead. To be
certain, our soldiers are much better than the enemy,
and we have some excellent "counter terrorist"
organizations, but they are mostly
trained for hostage rescues, airfield seizures, or the occasional "body
snatch," (which may come in handy). We will be fighting a war of
annihilation, because if their early efforts are any
indication, our enemy is ready and willing to die to the last man. Eradicating the enemy will be costly and time consuming. They have
already deployed their forces in as many as 20 countries, and are likely
living the lives of everyday citizens. Simply put, our soldiers will be
tasked with a search and destroy mission on multiple foreign landscapes,
and the public must be patient and supportive until the strategy and
tactics can be worked out. For the most part, our military is still in the process of
redefining itself and presided over by men and women who grew up with -
and were promoted because they excelled in - Cold War
doctrine, strategy and tactics. This will not be linear warfare, there will be no clear "centers of
gravity" to strike with high technology
weapons. Our vast technological edge will certainly be helpful, but it
will not be decisive. Perhaps the perfect metaphor for the coming battle
was introduced by the terrorists themselves aboard the hijacked aircraft
-- this will be a knife fight, and it will be won or
lost by the ingenuity and will of citizens and soldier, not by software or smart bombs. We must also be patient
with our military leaders. Unlike Americans who are eager to put this messy time behind us,
our adversaries have time on their side, and they will use it. They plan
to fight a battle of attrition, hoping to drag the battle out until the
American public loses its will to fight. This might be difficult to
believe in this euphoric time of flag waving and patriotism, but it is
generally acknowledged that America lacks the stomach for a long fight. We
need only look as far back as Vietnam, when North Vietnamese General Vo
Nguyen Giap (also a military history teacher) defeated the United States
of America without ever winning a major tactical battle. American soldiers
who marched to war cheered on by flag waving Americans in 1965 were
reviled and spat upon less than three years later when they returned.
Although we hope that Osama Bin Laden is no Giap, he is certain to
understand and employ the concept. We can expect not only large doses of
pain like the recent attacks, but also less audacious "sand in the gears"
tactics, ranging from livestock infestations to attacks at water supplies
and power distribution facilities. These attacks are designed to hit
us in our "comfort zone" forcing the
average American to "pay more and play less" and eventually eroding
our resolve. But it can only work if we let it. It is clear to me that the will of the American citizenry - you and
I - is the center of gravity the enemy has
targeted. It will be the fulcrum upon which victory
or defeat will turn. He believes us to be soft, impatient, and self-centered. He may be right, but if so, we must
change. The Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, (the most often quoted
and least read military theorist in history), says that there is a
"remarkable trinity of war" that is composed of the (1) will of the
people, (2) the political leadership of the government, and (3) the chance
and probability that plays out on the field of battle, in that order.
Every American citizen was in the crosshairs of last Tuesday's attack, not
just those that were unfortunate enough to be in the World Trade Center or
Pentagon. The will of the American people will decide this war. If we are
to win, it will be because we have what it takes to
persevere through a few more hits, learn from our mistakes, improvise, and adapt. If we can
do that, we will eventually prevail. Everyone I've talked to In the past few days has shared a common
frustration, saying in one form or another "I just wish I could do
something!" You are already doing it. Just keep faith in America, and
continue to support your President and military, and the outcome is certain. If we fail to do so, the outcome is equally
certain. | ||||
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على المدى
سيستعيدون ما أخذنا منهم : Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 17:22:32 -0400
I can assure you that 'hawkishness' and patriotism lead to only one place
-- the grave! I
urge all of us to stop waving around our rhetoric before some one loses an
eye -- for which you can be assured it will not be Mr Bush's, Mr Blair's
or Canada's Mr Chretien's eye, but your's or my
son's!
Not once during the media circus now ongoing, have I heard any
mention off the US Navy's inexcusable cock up of blasting an Iranian
airliner from the sky a few years ago. In fact I believe the ship's
Capitain was exonerated of any wrong doing, and was promoted to a position
in the Pentagon ironically enough. It is all a matter of perspective isn't it.
Basically all of us in the privledged west have to face the fact
that those who are not lucky enough to be in our traffic jams balancing
the steering wheel, a cell phone and a double latte with only two hands --
are rather pissed off at us.
Because in the long run what we have we took from them. Thank you for the discourse, Graham Bye | ||||
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الخطوط
العريضة .. دعونا نتكلم بحرية
: From: "A&E P." Since there is an opinion that we are not looking outside of our country, let me forward this as helping to see beyond our borders! Also, we need to be careful in our thoughts about Hollywood. This is an Art as well, and what happened was like a written plot out of a Tom Clancy's novel. Question now--are we the ones to be held responsible as writers and limit what we create? To comment on the media coverage is to recognize our own form of public censorship in what we are willing to accept or not as images, and info. No matter what, even with mistakes let us favor freedom of speech and ideas as an utmost privilege to keep! Anyway, hope some find this article in the Jordan Times as fascinating as I did. -- Ben Laden: A dissident waging holy war on the US By Angus MacKinnon Agence France-Presse ISLAMABAD — Visitors to the Afghanistan home of Osama Ben Laden do not come away with the impression that this is a man whose hands are dripping in blood. A source in Pakistan who has been to Ben Laden's villa in the southern city of Kandahar portrays the alleged mastermind of the world's worst terrorist atrocity as an impeccable host. “He's a very warm, hospitable man,”
the source told AFP. “He likes his food, he's generous to a fault and he
gives the impression he would do anything for you. “When guests sit down to dinner he
will wash their hands for them rather than letting his servants do
that.” It is an image that is at odds with Ben Laden's reputation in the
West as a coldly calculating killer and a byword for a new breed of global
terrorist. If President George W. Bush is to be believed, US intelligence
officials appear virtually certain that Ben Laden was behind the attacks
on New York and Washington.
“If he thinks he can hide and run
from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken,” Bush
vowed on Saturday. Ben Laden responded Sunday by denying that he was behind the
attacks which left more than 5,000 people dead.
“The US is pointing the finger at
me but I categorically state that I have not done this,” he said. Bin Laden does not however deny that he has dedicated his life to
waging a holy war against the United States that he knows could well end
in a premature death.
“In our religion there is a special
place in the hereafter for those who participate in jihad,” he told one
interviewer. The gaunt, bearded 44-year old was not always such an ardent
believer. Growing up as the pampered son of a Saudi Arabian construction
magnate, Bin Laden gave no indication that he would one day have a
five-million-dollar price on his head.
According to associates from his days as a civil engineering
student at university in Jeddah, the young Bin Laden was anything but a
devout Muslim. A regular at glitzy Beirut nightclubs, he revelled in the role of
playboy scion of a family that had capitalised on the country's oil boom
and its close connections to the Saudi royal family to acquire a huge
fortune. The family fortune, and the royal connections, are still intact.
Bin Laden Construction is now a multi-billion dollar business. But Osama, the third son of its founder Mohammad Bin Laden and one
of 54 children, is no longer welcome in the family home. “We have nothing to do with him,” a
family member told AFP this week.
Stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994, Bin Laden now lives in
Afghanistan as an honoured guest of the Taliban militia that rules 90 per
cent of the country under their own ultra-rigid interpretation of the
Islamic faith. He is reported to have at least three wives and more than 20
children — the last public sighting of him was at the February wedding of
one of his sons in Kandahar.
His residence there is a large mansion close to the home of the
equally-secretive Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, its opulence at
odds with the image of an ascetic man bin Laden likes to cultivate. But he is rarely there. The fear that the western intelligence
agencies who once courted him but now regard him as public enemy number
one will finally catch up with him means he constantly shifts his location
between numerous bases and safe houses across central Afghanistan. The exact route of Bin Laden's personal journey from the bars of
Beirut to the unwelcoming, mountainous terrain of Afghanistan remains
unclear. According to his own account, his view of the world was transformed
by a combination of events at the end of the 1970s: Egypt's decision to
make peace with Israel, the Islamic revolution in Iran and the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan.
But what is not in doubt is that it was in the crucible of
Afghanistan's fight against Soviet occupation that Bin Laden had his
vision of true Muslims coming together in a constant struggle against the
western powers and their treacherous allies in the Islamic world. “One day in Afghanistan was like
one thousand days of praying in an ordinary Mosque,” he later
recalled. After spending the first few years of the Afghan war raising money
for the Islamic resistance, he moved to Afghanistan in 1984, taking
command of, and financing, a brigade of up to 20,000 militant fighters
recruited from across the Arab world. It was also in Afghanistan that Bin
Laden began to acquire the organisational and communications skills that
have made him such a feared adversary of the West today. How much of this is due to the training he received at the hands of
the CIA is an uncomfortable question for the United States as it seeks to
establish the extent of Bin Laden's hand in the New York and Washington
atrocities. Bin Laden's network — Al Qaeda, or The Base — is believed to have
been first established around 1988, a year before the Soviet Union finally
pulled out of Afghanistan.
But it was not until four years later that western intelligence
officials began to link the organisation to attacks on US forces in Saudi
Arabia, Yemen and Somalia.
In November 1998, a US prosecutor indicted Bin Laden for
masterminding bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which
left more than 200 people dead.
Behind these and other attacks lies Bin Laden's fury over what he
regards as the ultimate betrayal of the Islamic faith — King Fahd's 1990
decision to allow US troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia in preparation
for the Gulf War against Iraq.
For Bin Laden, the US presence was an outrage, the effective
occupation of the land that was the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed and
is home to Islam's holiest sites.
Until that occupation is ended, there will be no lifting of the
fatwa that Bin Laden issued in 1998 and which best sums up his creed: “To kill Americans and their
allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who
is able, in any country where this is possible.” | ||||
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الصلاة
الصعبة : From: "Laura Tracy Baisden" I have been worried about everyone. I continue to keep residents of
New york, Washington, etc., in
prayer--it's so hard right now to even know where to begin and how
to pray.
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اليوم بدأت
الحرب : From: Lyn We were able to pull in different news sources and discuss the
possible reactions by the U.S. We were able to discuss our reactions,
fears, and intolerance. Were my kids scared? yes. So was and so I am. One
student wrote on the calendar that I keep for assignments: Today the war
begins. One student came up to me and told me he was 17 and wondered if he
would be drafted. We have seen so much loss to senseless violence in our
district that we were able to use those experiences to think
compassionately about the victims and the survivors. I asked them to
remember the time when one of our scholars who had a full ride scholarship and was
celebrating his senior year when he was shot in a drive by shooting trying
to protect a baby on new! ! years eve. Kids need to know that they are a
part of a bigger world than just the little piece that they have lived in
all their lives. Is it fair to protect them from this? I don't think
so. Lyn | ||||
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عنف مبصر ..
وعنف مضاد لكنه أعمى
From: "Matt T Lavine" This may seem a bit over the
top, or perhaps simply too violent to get into in many schools, but I've
always been a big fan of doing current "historic" fiction- at least one
exercise or lesson in, as way for students to develop skills in
perspective, character-- and to develop their own empathy skills. I suggest the following A.P.
article might be a challenging- perhaps too harsh article to use for that
work. Students could imagine, and write, both from the perspective of the
perpetrators of violence (implicitly examining the underpinnings of anger
and vengeance in themselves and their communities) and from the
perspective of those the violence was enacted upon-- thereby experimenting
with sympathy and complexity. Abdelali -- Prosecutor:
Slaying A Hate Crime Tuesday September 18, 2001
4:40 AM Sodhi, a 49-year-old Sikh, was killed in a
drive-by shooting outside the gas station he operated in Mesa.
-----Original
Message----- Karen Lewis's idea of youth
exchanges is fascinating and compelling...how many schools in this country
enact such exchanges with Muslim-majority countries? any of you have
any experience with this? I think this list would benefit from
hearing from those people who have sent students to Muslim countries, or
hosted Muslim students. What can we as teachers do in terms of
incoporating specifically Mulim texts (Quran, etc.) into our classrooms to
show students that Islam has nothing to do with what happened on
Tuesday? lots of love and peace, --daniel
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في مواجهة
التمييز الأمريكي ضد العرب : From: "Matt T Lavine" Already: Perhaps there are opportunities for students to explore some of the
complexities of generalizing, spirituality, extremism, in all different
forms. It might be nice for exercises to open up discussions, to counter
some of the "We're all united, all of America united in one desire"
rhetoric the politicians and shoddy news anchors keep feeding us. It might
be good for students to work w/ fragments of discussions- quotes from
various sources and various perspectives, and make poetry. Or to imagine
what it's like to be in another country, waiting to see what the U.S. will
do-- perhaps waiting to be attacked. They could compare feelings tied into
that notion with how they feel now. Or - perhaps this would be a good time for someone from a local
mosque to come in and present some poetry. The Arab American Institute
down in D.C. seems very helpful, as does the Arab-American
Anti-Discrimination Committee. Good luck, | ||||
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تميم
الأنصاري يقول لماري عن طلبان وابن لادن : إِنَّ هَؤُلاءِ لَشِرْذِمَةٌ
قَلِيلُونَ وَإِنَّهُمْ لَنَا
لَغَائِظُونَ. Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 21:49:25 -0400
From: Mary Pyett
Subject: Re: To GP I do not know the person that wrote this,
but think it provides interesting food for thought. Toivo Kallas Department of Biology &
Microbiology
I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is
no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in
New York. I fervently wish to see those monsters punished. But the
Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government
of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who captured
Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country
in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a
political criminal with a master plan. When you think Taliban,
think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the
people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps."
It's not only that the Afghan people Had nothing to do with this atrocity.
They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would
love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats
nest of international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee
it. Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and
overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved,
exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United Nations
estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a
country with no economy, no food. Millions of Afghans are widows of the approximately two million men
killed during the war with the Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing
these women for being women and have buried some of their opponents alive
in mass graves. The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and
almost all the farms have been destroyed . The Afghan people have tried to
overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been able to. We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the
Stone age. Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The
Soviets took care of it . Make the Afghans suffer? They're already
suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of
rubble? Done.Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? There is no
infrastructure. Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too
late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only land in the rubble of earlier bombs.
Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan,
only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip
away and hide. (They have already, I hear.) Maybe the bombs
would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they
don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs
wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific
thing. Actually it would be making common cause with the Taliban--by
raping once again the people they've been raping all this
time. So what else can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way
to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. I think that
when people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" many
of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as
needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms about killing
innocent people. But it's the belly to die not kill that's actually on the
table. Americans will die in a land war to get Bin Laden. And not
just because some Americans would die fighting their way through
Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that,
folks. To get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through
Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim
nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. The invasion approach is a
flirtation with global war between Islam and the West. And that is Bin
Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and why he did this
thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there.
AT the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There are
Muslims and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as
Islam. Bin Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can
constitute this entity and he'd be running it. He really believes Islam
would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the
world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the
West wreaks a holocaust in Muslim lands, that's a billion people with
nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's
probably wrong about winning, in the end the west would probably
overcome--whatever that would mean in such a war; but the war
would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but
ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else? I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and
poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his
cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their
kind can flourish. We can't let him do that. That's my humble opinion. Tamim Ansary | ||||
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أفغانستان ليست
حلاً : From: "Lucy Schneck" | ||||
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إلى تميم : From: "Perseverance Ranch" To : Tamim.
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العملة ووجها
الآخر : From: "A&E P. kaye Best wishes all..... AP | ||||
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الامتزاج
الاجتماعي مع الآخر : From: Sar Canz I think idea is excellent. Teachers who want to do it don't
have to start with schools abroad, though. I know that in suburban Washington
there is an Islamic school, and I'm sure there are others elsewhere in the
country. How about organizing
some pen pal or web exchanges between American
schools with large Muslim populations and American schools with no/few
Muslim students? (This would
help with language problems too). | ||||
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تفعيل
التبادل الشبابي وتآخي المدن : Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 22:16:43 -0700 (PDT) Thanks for starting the dialogue of alternatives. my brain stuck in
neutral today, all I could think of was "Make Bread not Bombs" the button
that graces my kitchen for these past 15 years... | ||||
| ضـــــــريح الشعـــــــر | ||||
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· إنهم لن
يسرقوا القمر
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 13:16:57 -0400 (EDT) Dear All, ... "The moon at the window / At
least the thief could not take that."
The sense is someone's come home and their
house has been robbed but the thief could
not take the moon in the window. So terrorists can take some things, but there are other things they can't take.
Poetry is a shrine in a way for many of
the things that they cannot take. There's a two-line poem by Czeslaw Milosz ... "Transparent tree,
full of migrating birds on a
blue morning. Cold, because there is still snow in the mountains." A poem like that ... is like a
little pill that you take to settle yourself down. It
is a way of providing a simple focus: tree, snow, sensation of coldness. Little poems like that seem very
simple and inconsequential perhaps, but they're
really prayers of gratitude to the mystery of
existence and the mystery of being fitted so beautifully to a
natural world.
Something like "America under attack" (if that is the slogan)
shakes us out of our position in
the world almost. It creates this disjuncture and
discontinuity and I think that even the tiniest poem about
some
mushrooms or someone's skin - whatever the little subject may be -
has a way of bringing us back
and reconnecting us to what really is vital. Someone described the state we're in now as the condition that
occurs
after you cut yourself, maybe washing a glass
in the sink. You know you can
see you've cut yourself, but you don't know
how much it's going to hurt yet.
It's that moment extended, you know, from last Tuesday to I don't
know how long. I don't know how
long that's going to take before we realize how much we
actually hurt ... | ||||
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ليونور غوردن
.. عبر النهر :
From: Leonore Seeking Solace (a poem in process) . the firefighters who pushed upwards past fleeing refugees of a
burning tower, to climb And for this, | ||||
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في . إس .
نيبول : They went to the bathroom and got their teeth.
They went down to the sitting room and ate large pieces of cake. --V.S. Naipaul | ||||
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قصيدة لآدم
زقاويشكي : Try to praise the mutilated world.
--Adam Zagajewski | ||||
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سهير حماد : From: "Jessica Klonsky" September 25, 2001 Ali Abunimah ********** 1- there have been no words. i have not written one word. no poetry in the ashes south of canal street. no prose in the refrigerated trucks driving debris and dna. not one word. today is a week, and seven is of heavens, gods, science. evident out my kitchen window is an abstract reality. sky where once was steel. smoke where once was flesh. fire in the city air and i feared for my sister's life in a way
never before. and then, and ! ! now, i fear for the rest of us. first, please god, let it be a mistake, the pilot's heart failed,
the plane's engine died. then please god, let it be a nightmare, wake me now. please god, after the second plane, please, don't let it be
anyone who looks like my brothers. i do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill. i have never been so hungry that i willed hunger i have never been so angry as to want to control a gun over a
pen. not really. even as a woman, as a palestinian, as a broken human being. never this broken. more than ever, i believe there is no difference. the most privileged nation, most americans do not know the
difference between indians, afghanis, syrians, muslims, sikhs, hindus. more than ever, there is no difference. 2 - thank you korea for kimchi and bibim bob, and corn tea and the
genteel smiles of the wait staff at wonjo the smiles never revealing the
heat of the food or how ! ! tired they must be working long midtown
shifts. thank you korea, for the belly craving that brought me into the
city late the night before and diverted my daily train ride into the world
trade center. there are plenty of thank yous in ny right now. thank you for my
lazy procrastinating late ass. thank you to the germs that had me call in
sick. thank you, my attitude, you had me fired the week before. thank you
for the train that never came, the rude nyer who stole my cab going
downtown. thank you for the sense my mama gave me to run. thank you for my
legs, my eyes, my life. 3 - the dead are called lost and their families hold up shaky
printouts in front of us through screens smoked up. we are looking for iris, mother of three. please call with any
information. we are searching for priti, last seen on the 103rd floor. she
was talking to her husband on the phone and the line went. please help us
find george, also known as a! ! del. his family is waiting for him with
his favorite meal. i am looking for my son, who was delivering coffee. i
am looking for my sister girl, she started her job on monday. i am looking for peace. i am looking for mercy. i am looking for
evidence of compassion. any evidence of life. i am looking for life. 4 - ricardo on the radio said in his accent thick as yuca, "i will
feel so much better when the first bombs drop over there. and my friends
feel the same way." on my block, a woman was crying in a car parked and stranded in
hurt. i offered comfort, extended a hand she did not see before she said,
"we"re gonna burn them so bad, i swear, so bad." my hand went to my head
and my head went to the numbers within it of the dead iraqi children, the
dead in nicaragua. the dead in rwanda who had to vie
with fake sport wrestling for america's attention. yet when people sent emails saying, this was bound to happen, lets
! ! not forget u.s. transgressions, for half a second i felt
resentful. hold up with that, cause i live here, these are my friends and fam,
and it could have been me in those buildings, and we"re not bad people, do
not support america's bullying. can i just have a half second to feel
bad? if i can find through this exhaust people who were left behind to
mourn and to resist mass murder, i might be alright. thank you to the woman who saw me brinking my cool and blinking
back tears. she opened her arms before she asked "do you want a hug?" a
big white woman, and her embrace was the kind only people with the warmth
of flesh can offer. i wasn't about to say no to any comfort. "my brother's in the navy," i said.
"and we"re arabs". "wow, you got double trouble." word. 5 - one more person ask me if i knew the hijackers. one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in. one more person assume no arabs or muslims were killed. one more person assume they know me, or that i represent a
people. or that a people represent an evil.
or that evil is as simple as a flag and words on a page. we did not vilify all white men when mcveigh bombed oklahoma. america did not give out his family's addresses or where he went to
church. or blame the bible or pat robertson. and when the networks air footage of palestinians dancing in the
street, there is no apology that hungry children are bribed with sweets
that turn their teeth brown. that correspondents edit images. that
archives are there to facilitate lazy and inaccurate
journalism. and when we talk about holy books and hooded men and death, why do
we never mention the kkk? if there are any people on earth who understand how new york is
feeling right now, they are in the west bank and the gaza strip. 6 - today it is ten days. last night bush waged war on a man once
openly funded by the cia. i ! ! do not know who is responsible. read too
many books, know too many people to believe what i am told. i don't give a
fuck about bin laden. his vision of the world does not include me or those
i love. and petittions have been going around for years trying to get the
u.s. sponsored taliban out of power. shit is complicated, and i don't know
what to think. but i know for sure who will pay. in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women will
have to bury children, and support themselves through grief. "either you
are with us, or with the terrorists" - meaning keep your people under
control and your resistance censored. meaning we got
the loot and the nukes. in america, it will be those amongst us who refuse blanket attacks
on the shivering. those of us who work toward social justice, in support
of civil liberties, in opposition to hateful foreign policies. i have never felt less american and more new yo! ! rker,
particularly brooklyn, than these past days. the stars and stripes on all
these cars and apartment windows represent the dead as citizens first, not
family members, not lovers. i feel like my skin is real thin, and that my eyes are only going
to get darker. the future holds little light. my baby brother is a man now, and on alert, and praying five times
a day that the orders he will take in a few days time are righteous and
will not weigh his soul down from the afterlife he deserves. both my brothers - my heart stops when i try to pray - not a beat
to disturb my fear. one a rock god, the other a sergeant, and both
palestinian, practicing muslim, gentle men. both born in brooklyn and
their faces are of the archetypal arab man, all eyelashes and nose and
beautiful color and stubborn hair. what will their lives be like now? over there is over here. 7 - all day, across the river, the smell of burning rubb! ! er and
limbs floats through. the sirens have stopped now. the advertisers are
back on the air. the rescue workers are traumatized. the skyline is
brought back to human size. no longer taunting the gods with its
height. i have not cried at all while writing this. i cried when i saw
those buildings collapse on themselves like a broken heart. i have never
owned pain that needs to spread like that. and i cry daily that my
brothers return to our mother safe and whole. there is no poetry in this. there are causes and effects. there are
symbols and ideologies. mad conspiracy here, and information we will never
know. there is death here, and there are promises of more. there is life here. anyone reading this is breathing, maybe
hurting, but breathing for sure. and if there is any light to come, it
will shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice after the
rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen.! ! suheir hammad Jessica Klonsky | ||||
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فصائد للأسى والفجيعة : From: ChriBrndt Dear folks, one of the things I did for my classes, knowing there
wasn't going to be any other possible topic, was put together a suite of
poems about grief, to try to make the point that at times of great loss,
literature can help us to shape and understand our feelings in ways
nothing else can. So, for
what they're worth to you, here they are, in some sort of order. POEMS FOR THE AFTERMATH OF THE WTC BOMBING
...beware the easy griefs,
that fool and fuel nothing.
—Gwendolyn Brooks After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round—
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—
A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go— — Emily Dickinson, c. 1862
DIRGE They are the dead who died of thirst
With water near, who never found
The cool, unfathomable well
Or the deep pool they thirsted for.
Who listening never caught the sound
Made by contented water flowing
Over green contented ground.
They died despairing and unknowing—
The unnecessary dead who fell
Almost beside the reservoir.
But there was no one there to tell
Of water to those men in thirst.
And now it is too late to tell.
— Robert Francis, 1936
MEMENTO MORI She made a picture of herself
before her illness had a name -
a face stripped of all but line and soul,
a listening face, before the words
came in like birds through an open window
and perched silent on sill and lintel -
leukemia, bone marrow cancer, acute
carcinoma, malignancy -
her face in the picture the face
of the one bird that does not
belong here, panicked
for open sky, exhausting itself
against the glass of every window
but the one it flew so easily in.
— Chris Brandt, 1996 A REFUSAL TO MOURN THE DEATH, BY FIRE, OF A CHILD IN LONDON Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour Is come from the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
Wit any further Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
— Dylan Thomas (Welsh), 1941
WRITTEN IN PENCIL IN THE SEALED RAILWAY CAR*
here in this carload i am eve with abel my son if you see my other son
cain son of man tell him that i — Dan Pagis (Austrian Jewish), c. 1945
*The sealed railway car refers to the
closed and locked trains the Nazis used to transport Jews to the
concentration camps. WHAT A SHITTY TRIP Ernesto Cardenal (1985) That unexpected telephone call from Managua
to
the last Antilles island—
"Ernesto, Laureano's dead."
On the flight —Trinidad-Barbados-Jamaica-Havana-Managua —
looking at sea and more sea, I could think of nothing else. Since we're born to die
the best way is for the Revolution
like
you did. Of course it would have been better if you'd never died so
long as your wife and your kids and your friends and
everyone in the world
never died. When I baptized him, 20 years old, in Solentiname
because he wanted to leave his insular protestantism for our revolutionary christianity
he didn't want a godfather or a godmother —
the entire campesino youth club were his godfather and
godmother.
Above all his obsession with the Revolution.
Fascinated by marxism but never wanted to read Marx. Very intelligent but never wanted to form an intellect. The most foul-mouthed person I ever knew,
but the one who said "bad words" most purely.
One time, commenting on the Gospel at mass:
"Those wise men sure fucked it up, going to Herod's
first." Or, on the Holy Trinity (summing it all up):
"Those three assholes are just one asshole!" The night he confessed to me facing the calm waters of the
lake,
"I don't believe in God or any of that shit — Well
I do believe in God only for me God is people."
But he always wanted to be my altar boy.
No
one could take that office away from him.
His most frequent statement: kiss my ass.
Laureano my son and my brother
son
sweet and headstrong like every son with his father —
and what's more since I was not your real father
you were more my brother than anything,
my brother much younger in years,
but
above all my compaأ±ero —
you like that word better, don't you?
—
the one you loved most after Revoluciأ³n. Compaأ±ero sub-comandante Laureano,
Chief of the Frontier Guards,
I say it with you: death can kiss our ass.
I
did not want to write this poem.
But you would say to me in the poetic language you spoke in those
masses, —
translated later into so many languages, even Japanese
)that must have cost them!) — "Poet bastard, tell those fucked-over
compaأ±eros of mine in Solentiname the counterrevolutionary sons of great bitches killed me but death can kiss my ass."
Like
that "tell your mother to surrender" of Leonel's.
You were always telling me you couldn't wait to be a guerilla. And I: "With your lack of discipline, up there they'll execute
you." Until your dream came true in the assault on San Carlos.
"Now we're gonna fuck those motherfuckers."
The bullets the Guardias shot at you. And you telling it later: "Thwat! Thwat! Thwat! — that time, I
thought I was dead!" Brawler. Party-lover. Womanizer.
Bursting with life but never fearing death.
Not long before he died he told me quietly in Managua, "Up there it's crazy. I could be killed any
day in an ambush." You have not stopped being:
You have always been and ever shall be
)not only in this
but
in all universes.) But sure you only lived
thought loved once. And now you're dead. Shall we say existence is like earth, or like stone, which is the
same, "stone endures because it feels
nothing." But no, nothing stone endures,
if you're alive to feeling there
beyond the speed of light
beyond the space which is time
completely conscious,
within the most vital
consciousness of all existence.
LAUREANO MAIRENA, PRESENTE!
Fucking airplane, delayed at every stop.
Deepest night already, over the ocean. I could not stop
thinking... I would like to die like you, brother Laureano.
And send word from what we call heaven,
"Fucked-over brothers of mine in
Solentiname, death can kiss my ass."
(Translated by Chris Brandt)
THREE DARKS COME DOWN TOGETHER
Three darks come down together,
Three darks close in around me:
Day dark, year dark, dark weather.
They whisper and conspire,
They search me and they sound me
Hugging my private fire.
Day done, year done, storm blowing,
Three darknesses impound me
With dark of white snow blowing.
Three darks gang up to end me,
To browbeat and dumbfound me.
Three future lights defend me.
— Robert Francis, 1960
WHEN DEATH COMES When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. — Mary Oliver, 1991
from THE CURE AT TROY
Human beings suffer. That means someone is hearing
— Seamus Heany (Irish), 1990 | ||||
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علاء الدين رمضان
علاء الدين رمضان : *
09 09 2002 | ||||
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مع تحيات | ||||
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| صهيل القصائد | غابة الدندنة | وكالة آرس | ||
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