by Indran Amirthanayagam
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| The sound of helicopters was nothing new. They often arrived to ferry out Turkish troops stationed near Ahmed’s town, a stone’s throw from Syria’s border with Turkey. But this was different. “The sound was horrible,” he said, describing the swarm of U.S. military helicopters that descended on a home less than two miles away from Ahmed’s house early Thursday, on a mission to kill ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. Ahmed, who for safety reasons spoke on the condition that he be identified by only his first name, went up to his roof, he said in a telephone interview. The thunder of the helicopters was eclipsed by a terrible clatter of gunfire “from the sky,” he said… At least a dozen people, including six children, were killed along with Qurayshi, according to local first responders. The Pentagon said that three members of his family were killed when Qurayshi detonated an explosive device on the top floor of the building, along with a child who was killed on the floor below in circumstances that remained unclear. The first responders, known as the White Helmets, said survivors of the night’s violence included a man who lived near the house and a young girl whose entire family was killed. For a time, they said, the girl was unable to speak, from the shock. The group was not sure how the other people died. “Truthfully all the bodies were largely covered in blood, sometimes it could not be discerned if it was bullets or explosions,” a spokesman said in a message. —The Washington Post, Februaryj 4, 2022. Photo: The scene after an overnight raid by US special operations forces against suspected jihadists in north-west Syria. Photograph: Aaref Watad/AFP/Getty via The Guardian, February 3, 2022. |
It is hard to palaver on the verandah, or bake bread in the kitchen,
or step out for a drive while helicopters fly above preparing to strike...
One moment you, human and humane, are alive, the next pulverized,
and that evening a headline, made famous instantly until the next drone
in the neighboring country shatters, or a kid shoots into classmates
somewhere, or a young girl is slaughtered by her brother for the family's
honor in a country that ends with 'stan (or states), no country immune
from trafficking in honor, and I declare I am most certainly politically
correct. That said, let us get down to the heart of this body otherwise
split by shards scissoring from the drone that dropped out of the sky
to finish political differences by means of a battering ram, an oxen
head, a threat, then action against what remains of order and grace,
ordinary representatives debating bills, showing the family around
the hallowed halls, certifying an election in these United States.
Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.
