The Day God Cried

I don't post most of the time because I feel I don't have a lot to say. Today is different....

I came across an article on www.truthout.org some time ago about the murder of an Iraqi family and the rape of their oldest daughter at the hands of U.S. soldiers... she was just fourteen. (The full article is copied and pasted at the end of this post for further information.)

I know things like this have happened all throughout history and continue to happen.... hearing this story only makes me feel more helpless. I wanted to do something. So I did one of the few things a writer can do.

I wrote a poem for her, Abeer. I feel the world needs to hear it.

_The Day God Cried_

In the dry mountains
a little place
of homes
and people, same as you
become just pebbles
trampled underfoot
broken country
all the world wished to forget

Abeer, little one
this was her fourteenth year
her name
it meant, it meant…

Born to family of
loving father
cherished mother
and littlest sister
she walked always
the dusty city
Abeer, little one
her hands the color
these brown sands
her eyes, the color
midnight clouds
and her hair
the night sky and stars play in it.
Her dreams
if only, if only
we knew them

Cherished mother
loving father
they worked each their hands
and cried softly to God
that their little ones would know love

The night
in her eyes
she hath seen the world
a place turned on its head
where not a day passes
when bloody rain does not fall
her eyes, seen much
seen more than a little one need see
but God answered
cherished mother
and loving father
and little Abeer
though her hands broken
eyes seared
and blood in her hair
Abeer, little one
of a soul gentle
she knew love
her name
it meant, it meant…

She walked home
the same as any other day
but on that day
a storm took the sands
and slipped between the trampled houses
in the night
a storm born
of little men
a world that shut its eyes
buried its soul
a home to them
O’ strong
O’ beautiful country
so broken
that it allowed to be born
a storm of little men
such as this

The storm
it blew down her door
but silently, silently
and took little Abeer
threw her down

The storm put its hands over her
nailed down her little arms
but still, she could see
just three claps of a thunderbolt
and loving father
cherished mother…
and littlest sister
are stolen away from this world
she saw, she saw
alone in this world
she cried
but no one heard

The storm turned its eyes on her
burned her little body
and she lived
each and every set of eyes
upon her
cursed her in tongues she knew not
for crimes she knew not
each and every one of them
upon her
one
after
the
other
She cried out
to cherished mother
loving father
littlest sister
to country
to God
one
after
the
other
but no one heard

The storm ended
Abeer, little one
become love
but the life forced from her body
and her last moment in this world
spent silent
and so completely alone

Abeer, little one
her dreams
when the storm ended
her little body, left broken and naked
alone
when the storm ended
her home
loving father
cherished mother
littlest sister…
love itself
was burned to dust
and trampled
Abeer, little one
her dreams
beautiful little things
we’ll never see

When the dust blew away
and there was only brown sand
the world tried to forget
but in that moment
God saw
God shut his eyes, and wept

He lifted cherished mother
lifted loving father
littlest sister
and little Abeer
into his embrace

And in the trampled sands
forgotten
a single flower rose up
and bloomed

Abeer, little one
her name, God said
it meant…
fragrance of flowers

_For Abeer Quassim Hamza al-Janabi,
August 19th, 1992 - March 12th, 2006_

WMC Iraq Commentary: Manhood and Moral Waivers
Robin Morgan
The Women's Media Center
Thursday 17 August 2006

Her birthday is August 19, her death day March 12.

We cannot let this crime, too, pass into oblivion.

When news surfaced that GIs allegedly stalked, terrorized, gang-raped, and killed an Iraqi woman, the U.S. tried minimizing this latest atrocity by our troops - claiming the victim was age 25 or even 50, implying a rape-murder is less horrific if the victim is an older woman. Now, Article 32 hearings - the military equivalent of a grand jury - have ended at Camp Liberty, a U.S. base in Iraq (U.S. troops are exempt from Iraqi prosecution). In September, a general will rule whether the accused should be court-martialed. The defense already pleads post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): in four months preceding the crime, 17 of the accused GIs' battalion were killed; their company, Bravo, suffered eight combat deaths.

But as the U.S. spun the victim's identity, investigators knew her name: Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.

Abeer means "fragrance of flowers." She was 14 years old.

The soldiers noticed her at a checkpoint. They stalked her after one or more of them expressed his intention to rape her. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky mixed with a high-energy drink and practicing their golf swings, they changed into black civvies and burst into Abeer's home in Mahmoudiya, a town 50 miles south of Baghdad. They killed her mother Fikhriya, father Qassim, and five-year-old sister Hadeel with bullets to the forehead, and "took turns" raping Abeer. Finally, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and lit them on fire to destroy the evidence. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

These details are from a sworn statement by Spc. James P. Barker, one of the accused along with Sgt. Paul Cortez, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan Howard; a fifth, Sgt. Anthony Yribe, is charged with failing to report the attack but not with having participated.

Then there's former Pfc. Steven Green. Discharged in May for a "personality disorder," Green was arrested in North Carolina, pled not guilty in federal court, and is being held without bond. He's the convenient scapegoat whose squad leader testified how often Green said he hated all Iraqis and wanted to kill them. Other soldiers said Green threw a puppy off a roof, then set it on fire. The company commander noted Green had "serious anger issues."

Who is this "bad apple"? A good ole boy from Midland, Texas.

"If you want to understand me, you need to understand Midland," says President Bush. Steven Green understands Midland - his home until his parents divorced and his mother remarried when Steven was eight, already in trouble in school. A high-school dropout, Green returned to Midland to get his GED in 2003. Then, in 2005, he enlisted. He immersed himself in a chapel baptismal pool at Fort Benning, Georgia - getting "born again" while being trained how to kill legally and die heroically. He was 19, with three convictions: fighting, and alcohol and drug possession.

Once, the Army would have rejected him. But he enlisted when, desperate for fresh recruits, the Army started increasing, by nearly half, the rate at which it grants what it terms "moral waivers" to potential recruits. According to the Pentagon, waivers in 2001 totaled 7,640, increasing to 11,018 in 2005. "Moral waivers" permit recruits with criminal records, emotional problems, and weak educational backgrounds to be taught how to use submachine guns and rocket launchers. Afterward, if they survive, they'll be called heroes - and released back into society. (One ex-soldier praising the military for having "properly trained and hardened me" was Timothy McVeigh).

The U.S. military is now a mercenary force. In addition to hired militias and "independent contractors," we do have a draft: a poverty draft. That's why the Army is so disproportionately comprised of people of color, seeking education, health care, housing. But the military inflicts other perks: teenage males, hormones surging, are taught to confuse their bodies with weapons, and relish that.

One notorious training song (with lewd gestures) goes: "This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun." The U.S. Air Force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. Military manuals are replete with such blatant phrases as "erector launchers," "thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness."

"Soft targets"? Civilians. Her name means "fragrance of flowers."

Feminist scholars have been exposing these phallocentric military connections for decades. When I wrote The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism (updated edition 2001, Washington Square Press), I presented far more evidence than space here permits on how the terrorist mystique and the hero legend both spring from the same root: the patriarchal pursuit of manhood. How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic - a pervasive message affecting everything from U.S. foreign policy (afflicted with premature ejaculation) to "camouflage chic," and glamorized gangtsa styles?

This definition of manhood is toxic to men and lethal to women.

But atrocity fatigue has set in. Wasn't rape a staple of war long before The Iliad? Weren't 100 thousand women and girls raped and killed in brothel-death-camps in the former Yugoslavia? Didn't warring Somali clans in the 1990s, sometimes joined by UN Peacekeeping troops, rape "each other's women"? Weren't the five surviving Somali women then stoned to death by Islamists for "adultery"? And weren't the earliest reports from another small, troubled country - of rape attacks on villages by gangs called Interahamwe ("Our Heroic Boys") - ignored? It was merely about women, and hardly anyone had heard of the place: Rwanda.

Yet the Pentagon is shocked. "Not our nice American GIs? Must be a few bad apples." Have we already forgotten Abu Ghraib? The photos of sexually tortured men leaked, but photos of abased and abused women prisoners are still classified, for fear of greater world outrage. Have we forgotten two U.S. marines and a sailor kidnapping a 12-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995, battering, raping, and abandoning her naked in a deserted area? She somehow survived and reported them, though her PTSD doubtless haunts still. So many military rapes have occurred in Okinawa, Korea, and the Philippines that Asian feminists organized entire movements in protest. Incidents keep occurring around U.S. ports and bases, including the hundreds of reported rapes of U.S. women soldiers by their fellow GIs (plus the joint epidemic of rape and evangelicalism at the U.S. Air Force Academy).

In 1998, a landmark UN decision recognized rape as a war crime - though this raises the question: If rape in war is a crime against humanity, then what is it in peacetime?The International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia issued indictments and convictions on sexual-violence grounds.

Sometimes, a few nice American guys are found guilty - as Green and his buddies might be. Then all returns to "normal." They're sacrificed to save the ranks of those who train them to do what they did, and to save the careers of politicians who sermonize obscenely about "moral values" while issuing moral waivers.

But this crime we cannot let pass into oblivion.

She was 14 years old and her name was Abeer.

It means "fragrance of flowers."
--------
Robin Morgan's new book, Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right, comes out in September (Nation Books). She is a co-founder of The Women's Media Center.

 

Wow... thank you for posting that... I'm so genuinely moved that I'm speechless... I never thought about... damn.
Thanks, I'll be buying that book.

 

Thanks for the reply. And thank you again to all those who've read this.

 

Great poem. I'm not sure if this was your intention, but when reading the poem, it may be easier/smoother to read if you changed a few lines. Some lines would feel better, in my honest opinion, if they were one rather than two.

"upon her
one
after
the
other"

That line is fine the way it is. I actually like what you did there.

"a little place
of homes"

But lines like this would be better if they were one. i.e. "a little place of homes" is one line instead of two. Although, if that was your intention, could you explain why? While I may not be a poet myself, I am a writer and I would be very interested in your thought process.

On a side note, I am curious as to why God would cry...Frankly, God is a bastard. He tends to do the worst things imaginable to people...Yet, people, and, I suppose, angels, continue to follow his lead/teachings. Perhaps this is what went wrong with humanity. Perhaps this is why humans tend to be so cruel. Their supposed creator is an asshole. Either way, whether you believe in God or not, you can't deny the fact that humans are evil (I suppose that is the proper term to use) by nature.

As for the story itself, well, what can I say...

The U.S. really needs to look at this situation and resolve it as quickly as possible. They should go back through their records and find everyone who's had a criminal record and start asking some questions:

"He was arrested for possession at the age of 21...Is he fit to serve in the military? Yes."

"He was arrested for attempted murder...Is he fit to serve in the military? No. Get him out of the army."

It's a shame what happened to her. But, frankly, stuff like this happens all the time. I think the main problem is that these were U.S. soldiers. They were there to protect (well, that's what they were supposed to do anyway), and also the fact that problems like these were generally kept hidden from the public.

While it may be nice to toss a story like this to the side, as there are bigger issues in the world (AIDS epidemic in Afrika, poverty, Nuclear Missiles, etc...), I still think it's important to remember little Abeer. This situation should never happen again, as it is barbaric (and we tell ourselves we're civilized...whatever that means) and a solution should be found immediately to assure us that it won't. It is very sad that the rape and murder of Abeer was what was needed to bring this horrendous problem to our attention.

 

[ QUOTE ]
Poppa said:

On a side note, I am curious as to why God would cry...Frankly, God is a bastard. He tends to do the worst things imaginable to people...Yet, people, and, I suppose, angels, continue to follow his lead/teachings. Perhaps this is what went wrong with humanity. Perhaps this is why humans tend to be so cruel. Their supposed creator is an asshole. Either way, whether you believe in God or not, you can't deny the fact that humans are evil (I suppose that is the proper term to use) by nature.


[/ QUOTE ]

I just wanted to reach out and tell you something I felt in my heart when I read your reply.
Due to God's mercy we are allowed the freedom to choose our own actions and behavior. If God wanted to make us his little robots he could have done this and more but I thank Him that He did'nt.
Now, the original sin IS rebellion. When God told Adam and Eve to not eat from that ONE tree, they both thought "well, why not?!". So when the devil came around and told Eve to eat from it, it didnt take much pursuation and when Eve told Adam to eat from it Adam could have said "no", she didnt twist his arm, but he didnt say no because he wanted to eat from it too.
My point is that that sort of rebellion is what got us here in the first place. God knows why he does and allows certain things to happen "the craziness of God is wiser than any man on Earth".
For example, when God took the Jews out of Egypt, they were supposed to start heading East, they would have been there in a couple of months but instead He told them to go West and when they were being persecuted He parted the sea and drowned the persecutors with it.
Now, what if the Jews had not listened to God and instead started going West? Their persecutors would have caught up to them and killed them. Another example of rebellion is when they started doubting God, and speaking ill of Him and what did God do to punish them? They dwelt in the desert for 40 years when they should have only been out there for a few months.
Some people say "God doesnt exist, or He would not allow bad things to happen". But that's like seeing people that need haircuts and going to a barber and telling him "Barbers dont exist" and he might ask "Why do you say that?" and you'd say "because, I just saw a guy that needed a haircut outside, so I dont think that barbers exist". So the barber would probably reply "barbers do exist, it's just that if people dont come to me, I cant help them" well, it's the same thing with God.
If people dont come to Him, He cant help them.

Therein lies the dilemna, you have free will, but what will you use it for?
To go to Him or to disobey and bad-mouth him?

We all have free will, and we're all REBELLIOUS by nature. It's been passed down since the very first man and woman on this planet. The question is will you recognize that rebellious attitude and obey Him and His word the best you can?
Jesus loves all of us, He would not have died on a cross for us if He didnt.
And God would not have sent His only begotten son to die for OUR sins in holy sacrifice.

I aint mad atcha, just had to let you know that God does know what He's doing, even if you or I dont understand it.
Have a blessed day, bro /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[ QUOTE ]
tonyfamilia said:

Now, the original sin IS rebellion. When God told Adam and Eve to not eat from that ONE tree, they both thought "well, why not?!". So when the devil came around and told Eve to eat from it, it didnt take much pursuation and when Eve told Adam to eat from it Adam could have said "no", she didnt twist his arm, but he didnt say no because he wanted to eat from it too.

[/ QUOTE ]

I understand what you mean. I suppose evil was the wrong term. Rebellious is a good word to describe us...Although, I think I still prefer the term evil as I find it fitting for humanity.

As far as my belief in God goes, I believe in...something more. Be it God (just not a Christian God) or just some kind of force that awaits us, that we maybe become a part of...

Anyways, you get the idea. I'm not Christian (or very religious in general) and never will be. I don't have anything against religious people, I just find it hard to believe what they believe. Religion for me, was simply a form of hope for people (a reason to get up in the morning). In the old days, it was also the best thing they had to control the masses as well (if you kill, you go to hell). In modern times, I think it's used more as guidelines of how to live your life.

As for you talking about the garden of Eden, well, didn't God say that "if thou eat from the tree of good and evil, thou will surely die"? Obviously, Adam and Eve didn't die, meaning God had lied. Anyways, when considering the bible, it's important (at least to me) to never take anything written in the bible seriously. Everything in there is some kind of metaphor. To take the example you used, the story of the tree is not in fact about rebellion (well, it is, but to a much lesser extent), it's all a metaphor for birth:

-The Garden: The womb.

-Snake: umbilical cord.

-The columns of fire leading out of the womb: Your mama's thighs.

It's pretty obvious what the tree of good and evil stands for (morals, etc...).

That's all I want to get into with that right now. I just want to make two more points:

1. Why I say God is an ass: There was a story in the bible (forgot what it was called) where there was this guy who prayed to God every day and did everything in the bible that he was supposed to. He was God's best human (I'm not sure what the best word for this is, so I'll stick with human). Now, the devil (who we all should now IS God's best angel. God banished him from the heavens because he wouldn't bow down when God asked him to. God had asked him to bow down to Man (his new creation) and Lucifer said "I will only bow to you") told God "I bet he wouldn't be so loyal to you if you take away his cattle", so God took away his cattle (killed them off) and the guy still prayed, then Satan said "blah blah, take away his home and possesions", God did it, the guy still prayed. Then Satan said "Blah, take away his 7 daughters", God did it and the guy still prayed. Then Satan said "make him extremely ill" God did it, then the guy still prayed.

So God said, "see, I did all this stupid shit to him, and he still prays to me every day." And Satan said, "Shit, I guess you're right," and walked off. Then God went up to the guy and said, "congrats my man, you passed my stupid BS test, here, you're cured." God then went on about his business.

Unfortunately for the guy, his cattle, home, possessions and 7 daughters weren't returned to him. Either God is stupid, or he's just an asshole who doesn't give a shit.

2. Reason why the Bible is total horse shit: First words found in the book of Genesis, "The First Book Of Moses, called..."

One, it has nothing to do with Moses, so, WTF?

Two, "First Book" is one of many. WTF would God make more than one, like he would give a shit. All this tells us is that humans had edited it (into many books).

Three, "Chapter 1" WTF, more BS editing.

Four, "Chapter 1" WTF, english? More BS editing.

Five, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." WTF, numbered paragraphs (that section wasn't numbered cause it was the first paragraph). More BS editing.

Six, "In the beginning..." O RLY?!? You can have a beginning without an end? "The" is definite, it should be "A" beginning. Or "at the dawn of time". Point is, you can't have a beginning without an end.

Case in point: The bible has been edited so many times that even if this was the word of God, we can't be sure some mofo didn't change a bunch of stuff to fit how he was running his kingdom.

I have nothing against you or your beliefs. I really don't want this topic to turn into a religious debate. Let's just agree to disagree. Unless you want to continue the debate, I don't mind, as long as it is regarded as such (a debate) and doesn't get too emotional. i.e. We can argue, but we can't let it get to a point where we're calling each other assholes and stuff.

I look at the bible one way, you look at it another.

I hope this post is nice and legible, I'm kind of in a rush right now, so if any of my ideas/arguments come off as incomplete or hard to read, I'll fix it up later.

 

In reply to Poppa; thanks for the reading and comments. I appreciate the feedback.

I don't consider myself much of a poet, rather I just follow feeling. I switched to poems and free verse because I felt my writing far too structured and predictable.

My thought process isn't flowing. It's more snatches of powerful thoughts that come in fits and spirts. I'm more interested in emphasis. For instance, in the line you mentioned, I wished to emphasize how this place is small, and then show that it's a place people still live in. I want the the two thoughts to be seperate. Though smoother, the verse where the two are combined loses its power when I listen to it with my imaginary ear. My ears have the final say in the poem structure.

I imagine all my poems spoken. Consequently, pauses are very important. Also, I could be accused of employing that speaker's trick of emphasis where a speaker drives her point home by holding off the competition of the sentence. Instead, she would add one thought, take pause, and then utter the next and build up to a rousing conclusion. We often hear this in a three beat rhythm.

I guess a comma would be just as effective, but I'd prefer to have just a single thought on each line.

Now as for the motivation of God's character in the poem, well, the interpretation up to you. I've only just begun to grapple with belief myself. I'm not much of a believer myself. The feeling I had at the time was that God was always away from the people in the story, but the sheer gravity and horror of the event drove even him into being at that moment. He actually had to come down to this world and embrace little Abeer. It made him more compassionate and more human. The whole poem is a cry of hope from a person trying to interpret the world from a perspective of one without faith.

I must confess that my reply is also rushed. I hope I was able to properly answer your questions. And yes, I'd rather this not turn into a religious debate. I'd hoped that it would show how tragedy unites us, even bringing together God and those without faith.

 

Awesome. I love reading about the thought process or methods a writer uses to get their point across. I completely understand what you were getting at. If I read it out loud, the pauses most definitely send the points in a little deeper.

I also loved what you said about just "following your feeling." I find a lot of writers tend to forget that part of their writing. Of course, if it's something objective (like an essay or an article) than "feeling" has no place in it, but if it's something like a poem, script, or short story, etc... Than the emotional part plays a big role.

I completely understand what you mean when you talk about God coming down from the heavens because the event is so horrendous. When I talked about why God would cry, it wasn't necessarily about your poem, I was just going off on a tangent. I fully understand the role God played in your poem. I guess I should apologize for going a tad off topic.

I, too, am struggling to find something to believe in. I look at religions and, while I find a few concepts here and there to be quite intriguing, I find myself disagreeing with a lot of their philosophies. I tend to find myself in accordance with a lot of Eastern philosophies though. I suggest broadening your search and look to the East to see if they have something you might be interested in. You'll get a much different perspective from the west and it is quite interesting to see the differences between Eastern and Western philosophies.

I also suggest reading up on some famous Western philosophers. I suggest (off the top of my head) Déscartes, Aristotle, Rousseau and Nietzsche.

They are definite must-reads.

As for your suggestion of me interpreting God's action of crying for myself...Well, it's always possible they were tears of joy...

Take that as you will. Sadistic, or intriguing...

May we never forget the horrors of our world...nor let them consume us.

Good night.

 

Thanks for your civil reply. As I've learned, from a few people on here, not everyone knows what civil is, so again thanks.
Yes, let's agree to disagree, and not turn this thread into a religious debate.
I wish you luck on your spiritual search/journey for something that fills that void. I guess we can both agree that it is one of the human needs: financial, emotional, physical and spiritual. I'll put in a prayer for you to find what you need and not what you want /versus/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Rheinaoi, it would be cool if you posted more of your poetry.

 

Well, looking back, my post wasn't as polite as it could have been. I really should've chosen better words than "BS", "asshole" and "mofo," but I really was in a rush...

Oh, and thanks Tony for wishing me luck...

I think I'm going to need it... /versus/images/graemlins/laugh.gif