by Mary Saracino
“This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun.”
--Lyrics from a U.S. military training song, as quoted in “Rape, Murder, and the American GI,” by Robin Morgan, AlterNet, 17 August 2006.
Only 14, Abeer hovered near womanhood, eager for love
no doubt, babies in time, an adventure or two,
perhaps content to feel the kiss of sun on her brown skin,
the caress of wind on a smolderingly hot morning,
all the many simple things that feed our frail human hearts.
Fragrance of flowers, her name meant.
At a checkpoint, the soldiers coveted Abeer’s beauty.
They marked her as prey, stalked her like bloodhounds,
the scent of violence heady in their nostrils. One Sunday night
in March, whiskey staining their sour tongues,
they set down their golf clubs, set aside their card-playing,
swapped fatigues for black civvies to hunt her down.
Her mother, Fikhriya, died first, then Qassim, her father,
followed by her tiny sister, Hadeel, five years young,
a bullet shattering each fragile forehead, blood splaying
the walls of their Mahmoudiya home. The GIs raped Abeer,
taking turns, they later reported. Afterwards, they stole her life.
The men doused the murdered family in kerosene,
set fire to their lifeless bodies, incinerating the evidence.
Then they grilled chicken wings.
At Camp Liberty , the soldiers rested their case,
copped to combat fatigue. War is hell, atrocities endemic,
trauma rampant. A few apples are bound
to go bad. Abu Ghraib. Okinawa . My Lai .
“This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun.”
Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi lives no more.
No longer does her fragrant name perfume the air;
the stench of lies lingers instead, the rancid pleas
of battle-weary soldiers crying out for mercy.
Beside her bones, Justice wails: “Those are the rifles
those are the guns, they are the killers, they are the ones.”
Mary Saracino is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet who lives in Denver, CO. Her newest novel, The Singing of Swans is to be published in October 2006 by Pearlsong Press.
