George Capaccio is a poet and storyteller who works extensively with children in Boston schools. Since the Gulf War, he has turned his attention toward a variety of politically progressive issues. Chief among these is the campaign to lift the economic embargo against the people of Iraq. In 1997, he journeyed to Iraq as part of a peace delegation.

Following are selected poems that reflected the human suffering of the Iraqi people who are deprived of food and medication since the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq in 1990.

No, I didn't look away
from the things I went there to see.

In a land where hunger had become rare
until sanctions and war joined hands in prayer,
I saw women in black begging at street corners
and boys too poor for school
hawking cigarettes and kerosene
to keep their families afloat.

I saw parents rushing into hospitals
with children in their arms,
and emergency rooms flooded with patients
holding in pain on bleeding floors.

I saw ambulances on cinder blocks
rotting away in a parking lot
because ambulances are weapons of war
and can't be repaired in Iraq.

I saw oxygen tanks standing in line,
waiting for valves that never come,
and hospital hallways stripped to the bone.
Everything gone, lugged off and sold
for even the simplest supplies--

a lightbulb, a pail, a bag of diapers.
I saw am infant named Amani Kasim
curled up on a filthy blanket,
her face confined to an oxygen mask,
her body shriveled and discolored
from severe malnutrition.

I saw a fourteen year old girl named Firial
who could not stand and could not speak
and was dying from cancer.
"Two maybe three days more," Doctor Hillal said.
"We do not have the proper drugs
so we give supportive care only."

She was so thin, so weak
she could not lift her head off the pillow.
I caressed her brow and cheek
and the damp ringlets of hair
fallen about her face.

A collapsed blood bag froze above her.
Mother and grandmother softly wept
and prayed to God for mercy.

I saw other mothers tending incubators,
that didn't have thermostats
and might overheat.

I saw the blood and the urine
on beds without sheets,
the nimbus of flies around the bottles of formula,
the sadness in the doctors' eyes
as they told me which infants
would live or die.

No, I didn't look away.
I caressed each brow,
whispered through my touch,
"Your life is a part of me and when you go,
I shall weep."

I saw a generation of mothers
keeping watch on their children
I heard them ask me for medicine
and felt their hands open then meet
the emptiness of mine.

SALIMA ABBAS

1

Peace cranes in the morning light flooding the hole that still gapes

where the bomb landed, churning through

the reinforced concrete roof,

twisting steel rods into wild spasms

Of shock from the blast.

All the exists froze.

Mothers with children perished

in flames without mercy, in pain without end

on Ash Wednesday and the passing of Ramadan,

that night in February,

1991.

The men had given up their places

for love of families

as the sirens sounded and the planes approached

like hideous demons from distant dens.

"Go to the shelter!" Mrs. Abbas told her daughter.

"I have chores that need doing. You will be safe there.

The Americans know we are only civilians."

The little girl believed her mother and walked

into the cold ovens of Amariyah.

2

The long strands of colorful peace cranes hang so perfectly.

In the shameless morning light, a peck of little birds

chirps and twitters, darting from perch to perch

in the space where a roof had been

so perfectly impregnable.

It is a shrine now, a hallowed place

for pilgrims to visit and survivors to mourn

the loss of their only treasures.

What remains are candles along the walls.

What remains are carefully arranged bouquets.

What remains are photos of the children and mothers

along with their names and the frozen flames

of their lives.

What remains is the inextinguishable voice of ash,

of charred concrete and steel singing to these living ears

of a peace no mind can grasp.

I saw handprints on the ceiling,

the burned in handprints of children

lifted above the rest and pushing, pushing

against the impossible odds of concrete.

And I saw the image of a woman saving her infant

from the beast of the blast,

her love and humanity forever formed

as the sign of Christ on the shroud of Turin.

3

I walked through each room, I looked into the eyes of each face

remembered there, I touched the walls and I wept

for those who died and for those who ordered their death

and would have done it again, they said,

even as the dead swept up like embers

from charcoal ruins.

And when I came into the light I met the woman

whose spirit burns with lamentation.

Guide and guardian of this dark inferno,

she led me into a trailor and showed me a photo of her child

who had died the night she stayed home working.

Tears soften her eyes as I hold her hand

and offer her a rose

quartz crystal I've carried from home.

She accepts it and there is silence between us.

I want to embrace her and let her feel my tears on her face

as I would feel hers on mine

and somehow we would both know together at the same time

how terrible a thing has happened here and how the world

must never be allowed to forget.

But all I can do is hold her hand and tell her how sorry I feel.

"My name is Salima Abbas," she says. "This is my home now. I

cannot leave. This is where my family died and God willing,

this is where I too will die.

"Mr. George, tell your people what you have seen. Tell them

we are people too and only want to live and be happy.

Ask them not to turn away from our suffering."

I will, I say, and walk away.

My heart is heavy.

I hear the old women scrubbing the steps to the shelter

with brooms made of dried palm leaves.

I hear bird song filling

the hole in the roof.

I feel sunlight dripping on my face and hands.

I am in Baghdad on a beautiful spring morning.

Mrs. Abbas in black waves to me and then I am gone.

In our driver's car I look once more at my hands and see

how little I know of suffering.

The moon is full
over Baghdad.
Spring rain pelts the leaves of the palm tree
protecting my balcony.
I stand there folding the night like a paper crane
bestowing peace
and the promise of joy.

In my heart are all the days and nights I've spent
in this sad, forsaken land
with wings closed, voice silenced.

How can I sing when so much grief pours down on me
from eyes that bear no trace of anger
for those whose hands like Pilate's
are sanctified by violence.

Eyes of mine, what poor vessels you are.
The water you carry continually spills.
I should rip you out, give you to a dog.
I have seen what I came here to see
but I do not believe it is true.

In my heart a broken wing
snaps together and then
I overflow with fury
and pain too deep
to mend.

No, it is not possible
so many have died
for want of food
and medicine.

Tell me, O Prophet,
the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates
are pure as freshly fallen snow.

Tell me the faces of your people
shine with hope and beauty.

Tell me the children I saw in hospital wards
sleep each night on crisp white sheets
angels have touched with radiant love.

Tell me, Ancient Son,
the nights I have folded and tucked away
will one day spread
living wings and lift
all the children from their graves.

And their eyes, so deep and lovely,
shall show us the light we lost
when madness darkened our way.

I do not believe what I see.
It is not true.
No nation could do this to another
and call it just.

No people could stand by and watch
in silence and indifference
as a generation of children falls,
falls softly as this rain.
 
 

1

"Tell us about your trip.
We want the full report,"
Maura says when we meet for dinner
at a tiny bistro in Newton.

I say I'm not ready
but her husband keeps pressing
so I let them know
what I saw and felt.

Alex won't be moved
beyond applying reason
and geopolitical finesse
to the wounds I open.

I think of boys flown home from Saigon
with live grenades for hearts
and heads full of gunshot and fire
and loosing their buddies day after day.

Now I too have been to war,
have seen the wounded and the dying,
felt their pain give birth to mine.

I listen to friends talk about their lives,
and I'm back at Al-Qadissiya holding an infant
and hearing the doctor tell me
she has two, maybe three days more.

Alex can't hear what I'm saying.
I am a madman now,
a Lear up in arms
at all the logic
he has raised against me.

Taste of fire on my lips.
Have these images
burning up my heart
with darkness and blood.
My eyes scream red.

I think of Karima, widowed and shy,
watching her daughter teach me to say
the Arabic words for moon and stars.

Later I brought them 3 kilos of sugar
then danced in a ring with dear Fatima
as a woman on TV sang a popular song
and the kerosene stove swept the cold away.

I think of Ayda, also widowed
and strong as a lioness who hunts alone
and manages to feed her three
severely retarded sons.

After serving tea and sweets of dates,
she smiled and said.
"Great are God's blessings,"
even as Shafeq, her oldest,
dragged himself across the floor,
his legs twisted behind him, his eyes running to greet us.

I can't get those kids out of my mind.
Even now, months later,
I worry them down like prayer beads.
They will not last,
they will not last
they will not last
through the heat of the summer
on unchanged hospital beds
with sand flies storming in their faces
and the medicine they need not coming in.
 

2

"Aggression,"
Alex says sampling the Petite Syrah,
"cannot be countenanced."

And the I remember
lovely Warud standing for the camera
that all the world might see
her starved, weightless body;

peaceful Shaima unable to stand,
vanishing into cancer;

tiny Nahia clinging to life through an oxygen mask,
her skin already wrinkled and old;

Haithan raising himself on his elbows
to ask children everywhere to help.

I think of silent Muhammad
and his impossibly long eyelashes
catching the light as he drove us
past one army post after another
along the road from Basrah.

I think of the soldiers in olive green
huddled in front of the tents,
a fire burning softly
the wind that never ceased.

Father, let me, just once, let me in,
I scream over and over again
at his silent, moribund heart.

The waiter opens a fan of desserts.
Maura orders a cafe creme.
Alex requests the check.

3

A lifesize photo of Mr. Hudson,
the servant on Upstairs, Downstairs,
covers a door at the Al Dar Hotel.

Firial, who works there, never looks sad
though her brother died in the war
and her mother continues to grieve.

In their home in Baghdad
they shelter two families
who would otherwise be homeless,
and minister to three,
including Ayda's.
 

Firial's nephew Raffi is a darling boy.
His smile lights up their living room.
His hair is red as dawn.
His bones no longer grow
in the lingering shade of marasmus.

I wrote a poem for Firial
and gave it to her in secret
the night before we left:

Iraq has eyes. Her eyes are your eyes.
They see the pain and beauty of life.
Iraq has a voice. Her voice is your voice
speaking words of healing and comfort.
Iraq has hands. Her hands are your hands
giving food and the blessing of love.
Iraq has a heart and it is your heart
beating with the blood of the Tigris and the Euphrates,
the blood of a glorious past and a wounded present
your hands and voice and eyes
will never cease from mending.

"If you had talked to me
the way you did to our friends,"
my partner says on the way home,
"I would have gotten up and left."