October 15, 2007
Amman, Jordan
Dear Friends,
Fall has come to the northeast of the U.S. from where I hail. Although it is still T- shirt weather here in Amman, I imagine the leaves falling from the trees, a symbol of the passing of life, a forecast of the cold grip of the coming winter months. It is a natural phenomenon. The landscape will become barren and stark until spring arrives, if indeed spring comes again.
The other day Kathy Kelly forwarded one of David Smith-Ferri’s recent poems on to me. Kathy and David will be embarking on a speaking tour in the states sometime soon. The poem entitled The Eyes of These Two Children, became my reflection this morning.
Until I read David’s poem, I was only aware that two women had been killed in Baghdad earlier this month when private security guards escorting a convoy of four vehicles opened fire on their car. Contracted by the Australian-owned Unity Resources Group, this incident followed on the heels of a controversial September 16th shooting involving a US security firm Blackwater in which 17 people were killed.
How ironic, and shocking, to learn through a poem that there were two children in the back seat of that vehicle, children who witnessed their mother, or mothers, being killed. Such an unnatural phenomena, so horrible to imagine, must give us pause.
“If questions can lead us like a star or signpost” David asks, “if questions can steer us….draw us….accompany us…become a quest…let this be one: ‘How can we be responsible to Iraqis ten thousand miles away, caught in the teeth of war?’”
David describes the convoy of SUVs and armored security guards, this time as all-too-usual, “in its deadliness, its taut and explicit threat, like unexploded ordinance. Come too close and I will maim you.” He refers in the poem to an initial assessment made by the Security company’s corporate officials: “Our security team was approached at speed by a vehicle which failed to stop despite an escalation of warnings. Finally shots were fired at the vehicle and it stopped.”
I recall reading the same statement in the press here, and my shocked reaction at the use of the word “it”. It stopped, the vehicle stopped. The vehicle died. The vehicle was killed. The loss of precious human lives wasn’t noteworthy.
The statement, David writes, “failed to mention the two adult hearts that also stopped, or the heart failure of guards who fled without securing medical aid for the injured. It also failed to account for the two children in the back seat, their racing hearts failing, for the moment, to comprehend the meaning of blood and brains and hair spattering the upholstery inside the car and their clothes, and stuck to windows.”
The poem continues. “State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the shooting had nothing to do with the State Department or the U.S. government.” If my memory serves me correctly, the Security company was guarding USAID officials.
“If a question can lead us,” David proposes, “try these:
What part of a child is amputated when her parent or relative is killed in front of her? When she wakes up after surgery, where is the pain centered, where are the bandages laid, where does the wound ooze, the scar form?”
A dear friend and mentor, Paul, wrote recently about an upcoming gathering of peacemakers in northern New York. What suggestions, he asked, might I have to people in the states who want to offer “direct aid” to Iraqis suffering the consequences of war?
Yesterday I met with a young Iraqi woman who had been kidnapped and abused in ways that defy description. At one point I asked this sad young woman struggling with depression how we might help. I knew for a fact that she is desperate to find work, any work, to support herself. “We don’t need money, we need safety” was her answer to me. I am aware, through the updates of Paul and other peacemakers in the states, of the tireless efforts and persistent actions on the part so many to change our country’s war making mentality, to bring an end to the killing. May the words of David Smith-Ferri serve to re-inspire and re-motivate the downcast and discouraged among us. “Let us become the words that we embrace and walk, voluminous into their offices, forbidding them to hide for another moment from the eyes of these two children.”
Wishing you much strength and renewed resolve, Cathy Breen
