We Grow at The Speed of War
God didn’t consider us when he created earth
By saying: become. We were children stuttering
In the whispers of sleeping homes.
We ran to schools enveloped by our mothers’
prayers that feared everything.
But the head mistress shortened our lives with a quiet sentence:
‘We’ll return after the end of the war… in ten days’,
In her Kurdish accent.
So, we remained, gathered in the school yard
Wide eyed, our souls bewildered and afraid.
The days stretched and became years.
We separated, boys to battlegrounds
and girls to the waiting steps.
My friends never returned.
Their leftovers were gathered in wooden boxes
Decorated with holes of separation.
My mother, like us, suffered from waiting.
She sat beside us holding on for father.
Who used to return a time and leave many times;
We didn’t know where he went.
To avoid a question, he’d say: ‘to the mobile frontline.’
We started to collect our days and stuff them in calendars.
In our grief we painted our eyes with the dust
of graveyards. There was nothing but banners:
(Long live the leader).
And yes, he lived long enough to stitch one war with another.
My father’s sister counts her children with her days
they never returned.
In one wake she said goodbye
to all of them
then vowed a long silence.
‘We left the war as winners’
hah
said the leader.
Let’s go to my second war’
The soldiers knew nothing about it.
My mother counts my brother’s soldier belts,
She knows the battles are a losing game.
We hunger.
We hunger,
And the leader’s belly grows.
He appears, crying on the channels:
‘I only have one suit’,
And behind the screen, he weds his son in a golden plane.
‘Don’t worry’
My neighbour pats his son’s back,
‘I returned from the war alive and will stay.’
He rushes before the light of dawn to the hospitals
Investing every penny from his veins.
My sister sits
putting her baby to sleep, she sings: ‘I want the war to never return,
And you stay for me.
Make up for your father who left us without rerun.
The martyr of wars.’
But she’s bad,
A hypocrite,
So crafty.
She eavesdrops, and as soon as he grows, she steals him.
‘Don’t you have enough?’

Will there be a day that I can surround my family
with peace – like other people?
Will there be a day that I count my wishes
in a notepad and they come true?
I am no woman if I don’t tell you face to face.
And this gesture does not suit you.
You are the worst free spirit.
By Faleeha Hassan