Qleeshayawa
*
Choman
Hardi
‘Qleeshayawa’, they would say and
start running
the old, the young, men and women.
‘Qleeshayawa’, they would
say.
The young men joked about it between
themselves
It’s our marathon, it keeps us
healthy.
They ran indefinitely
sometimes with no _expression on
their faces
other-times covered with the sweat
of fear
running, looking backwards
running, looking backwards
or with humour.
Sometimes it was triggered by a
gunshot
or the sight of vicious soldiers
jumping out from their tank into a
square.
Other-times, accidentally, if
somebody ran
they all followed.
Sometimes they would be surrounded
by tanks
with nowhere to run to-
and forced to stand like a flock of
sheep
witness the execution of a friend
and to clap and shout:
Long live justice!
***
*Note: Qleeshayawa means cracking open,
it is used to refer to the land or pomegranates cracking open, in
the 1980s this word was used to refer to Iraqi soldiers attacking
the Kurds.
