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.
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