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By Kamal Mirawdeli:
Shaymaa is that innocent piece of beating human flesh rescued from her mother’s womb 10 minutes after her murder, through a posthumous Caesarean section. This is her story as reported on Sky News website. Watching the tragic public genocide of Gaza and the West’s reaction to it, I could not sleep for several nights. I wrote parts of this poem in my dream. The original is in my language Kurdish and was published yesterday. This is a hasty recreation of it. This is an expression of emotions and facts as I see it and feel obliged to communicate to others. I hope this will contribute a bit to serious thinking about the tragic situation of our common humanity and a new vision of the world in which children are all recognised, treated, loved and educated as children.
Sky News’s report:
“A baby girl has been born through a posthumous Caesarean section after her parents and brothers were killed by an Israeli airstrike, according to Palestinian medical officials.The girl’s mother, Shaymaa Hussein al Sheikh Ali, 24, was killed by shrapnel after the roof of her family home on Thursday. Her daughter, also named Shaymaa, weighed 5lbs and was said to be in a stable condition in Al Aqsa hospital on Monday.
Dr Wajdi Qeshta said: “They brought the mother and she was in the last month of her pregnancy.”The doctors operated on the mother when they found she [the baby] had a heartbeat. Now the condition of the baby is not so good, she is still on a respirator.”
Doctors said the baby girl was likely to remain in hospital for five weeks after suffering from a shortage of oxygen.”
http://news.sky.com/story/1309153/gaza-baby-born-after-airstrike-kills-mother
Children of Gaza; Pic – imemc.org
A night vigil with Shaymaa
(1)
Sleep Shaymaa, don’t come to this life,
Don’t open your eyes to this strife
Your mum is not here
Don’t move your little mouth around for her breast
She will not give you an embrace
She will not see your face
She will not come
The story is hard
I don’t know when you can hear it
And not cry to death
Shaymaa, here is Gaza
But you have not lived too long
You don’t know to what race, what nation you belong
You don’t know why you are here
Prematurely, a solo orphan,
The daughter of death
You still need oxygen for your breath
No you don’t know the mystery
Of your unborn story
And I do not know
How much longer
They will allow you to be
Few more minutes, days, weeks,
For here is Gaza
It is either a prison or a graveyard
Buds are not allowed to grow to a tree
(2)
Don’t breathe little flesh
The noise above are drones looking for your breath
The tremor around are rockets aiming for your little lungs
This uproar nearby are tanks chasing the shadows of the dead
These soldiers are Nazis keen to search the inside of your mum’s womb
Shaymaa, don’t open your eyes
This city is Gaza
Every shop, road, and quarter
Every hospital and school
Is a slaughter house
Where child meat is cheap
But your breathing five-pounds-flesh
Is too dear to ignore.
Your grandma says:
All your mum’s dream was
To see you come out, give you a hug and kisses.
This is an impossible dream in Gaza
Only those dreams are allowed
Which go straight to unknown graves
Don’t dream raw meat
Don’t dream that one day you would walk and talk
And there would be a mother and brothers to meet
Don’t breathe
Their technology detects the heat of sighs and tears
Don’t dream
Their technology detects the substance of dreams
They are not afraid of anything
But your stubborn breathing
They are obsessed with nothing
But the address of whereabouts of your desire for living
They are always righteous
Because they can kill
They kill
And kill
And kill
And kill
And kill
Until killing is tired
Of killing
Until killing
Is fed up with killing
(3)
Don’t be scared Shaymaa, don’t.
Don’t be afraid, children of Gaza, don’t.
These are humans, civilized, fair
They have just come to play Hide and Seek games with you.
(Knock Knock on the roof)
Who is dropping stones and sand over us?
Oh, dear children!
We are here to play a Hide and Seek game with you.
Leave your home in ten minutes
And hide where you cannot be found
Otherwise you will be dead!
Who are you coming to our home?
We have never seen or known you before.
You are neither friends, nor guests nor strangers.
Why are you cheating in the Hide and Seek game?
Why do you kill us before we leave our home?
Why do you kill us while we are at the door?
Why do you massacre us while we are holding the naked hands of our parents trying to leave?
Why do you kill us while we are in an ambulances?
Why do you kill us when we collectively hide in UN schools and shelters?
Why do you kill us inside the ruined hospitals, the ruined schools?
Why, when you give us a pause and we go to get food in our markets for Eid,
Do you bomb us and the market and the Eid?
When we go to bury our dead in the graveyards,
Why do you bomb us and the dead and the graveyards?
When you give us a pause to go back to our homes
To collect our belongings
And we do not recognise neither the roads to our homes
Nor our homes
And we try to dig out the bodies of our left brothers and sisters,
Why do you kill us again, twice, thrice, and endlessly?
Why do you kill us before we are born, after we are born, before we are dead and after we are dead?
Why do you kill us when we walk over ground, when we hide under-ground?
Why have you besieged us inside a cage?
We cannot fly
We cannot throw ourselves to the sea
You own the sky
You own the sea
You own the earth
You own the world
And we go underground
And breathe through our tunnels
But you come
And come
And come
From the skies
From the seas
And kill
And kill
And kill
Leaving behind bodies and ruins
And many many many
Whys.
Because we have will to kill
And Shaymaa has will to live.
(4)
Shaymaa, don’t open your eyes
Don’t open your little mouth,
Don’t try to understand anything
To ask, to think
Don’t try to know the names of those
Who played Hide and Seek with You
Don’t try to know your own name
To what nation you belong, what identity you will take
You are a baby, a child
All the children of the world
Have only one name: Child
They have only one identity:
Childhood
They have only one characteristic
They laugh and play
They have only one little dream:
To play with each other and not be bullied
They have only one need:
To be free
to be children.
And not to be hungry.
Listen to me little flesh,
[How is your oxygen and your breath?]
And don’t ask the names and identity of your killers
Don’t be born into the history of hatred
The killers all have only one name:
Slaughterer
They all steal each other’s faces
They all use each other’s hands and knives
They all have one Head
Full of …. I do not know what
I cannot find a name for this mystery
It is more than hatred and nihilistic obsession
Nazism is not a race, a theory, a history,
It is a mind-set and conduct
Hitler, Hulagu,
Nero, Franco
Ataturk, Nixon, Netanyahu
Saddam and Da’sh
The Regime of Executions
They all have one ancestry
The one who kills one child would kill humanity
The one who sheds a drop of a child’ blood, would shed a sea of blood.
(5)
Shaymaa let me tell you the story of Taymur.
Recently, in this ruined land of ours Kurdistan
[for we had 4000 ancient villages]
They came and came
They put the parents and children in trucks
They said to the children: laugh and be happy
We are taking you to a wonderful picnic
They took them, tens, hundreds, thousands
Tens of thousands
At daytime, at midnight.
With clothes, in pyjamas, without clothes
They took them away, farther farther
To the deserts of south
There they dug holes in the ground like hell
Took the arms of children
And threw them to the ditches alive
With their Kurdish clothes on
The slaughterers were laughing
They sprayed the kids’ faces with bullets from their machine guns
All the time they were laughing
Proud of their nationalistic triumph
Then they brought bulldozers
And covered the children, cries, and fear and tears
With the burning sand of the desert
They did this to 182 000 people
Only one kid survived
He was Taymur
He was the only one
To tell
A tiny bit of the story as it happened
And of rare humanity
And I went back to my land
I never saw my village again
I never saw my neighbour again
I never saw my school again
I never saw my hidden first love poem again
I never saw my childhood lover again
I never saw my real country, my real people again
And no one tells, no one remembers, no one cares
About the story of 182 000 souls
About the civilization and history of 4000 villages.
And the Slaughterer was Saddam.
(6)
The CIA man laughed:
We created Saddam.
(7)
Sleep, Shaymaa, sleep
For Shajaiyya is Guernica
SHAJAIYYA IS GUERNICA
Where is Picasso?
Gaza is Guernica
Where are the Picassos?
Every slaughterer is Franco,
Where are the European revolutionaries?
The leftist protestors?
They object that guinea pigs and mice
Are cruelly used for scientific experiments.
But Shaymaa, they do not protest
When you and the children of Gaza
Are used as guinea pigs for the experiment
Of the most lethal technology of mass destruction?
(8)
Sleep, Shaymaa, sleep
Don’t be proud of any nationality
Don’t be sure of any eventuality
The Nazis in Kiev
Have also turned the cities of East Ukraine
Into Gazas and Guernicas
Over all the land
They have spread darkness and destruction
They shoot, shell and bomb
Enjoy indulging in blood
And death and ruin
I never thought this could happen in Europe
And Obama, Cameron, Holland and Angela
Support and encourage Kiev
And face Russia’s Putin with bloody claws and teeth
And with the deepest moral conviction
Expose their well-shaved naked behinds
To dear Netanyahu for his satisfaction
He responds with anger and exasperation:
Go away, Bastards!
I am eating children
I have no time for masturbation!
(9)
O Shaymaa, my dear,
Where do you want to come?
This is the real
New World Order.
Dr Kamal Mirawdeli is a Kurdish writer and was presidential candidate in the KRG elections in 2009 (winning in the regions of Kirkuk, Sulaymaniyah and Koye where no vote-rigging occurred).
One should be fair and side with the truth. It is very unfortunate that such a large number of Palestinian civilians have been killed but at the same time its not fair for Hamas and extremist terrorists Islamic Jihad groups to shell Israeli civilians with rockets on a daily basis. Israel has to defend its self. Like Netanyahu said if Arabs lay down their arms, there will be peace but if Israel does so, it could be destroyed. I am a muslim myself but do you really believe its fair for extremist Muslims across the Islamic world to continue denying Jews right to live in peace? Lets suppose Kurdistan was in the place of Israel and it was besieged by a set of hostile states, which it is, how would we react to assure protection of our citizens. Give the example of ISIS in Mosel. Peace is what most wish for both for Israelis and Palestinians. By the way, Iran & Arab Muslim countries are the ones responsible for contributing to acceleration of conflict instead of mediation or peace. Should Palestinians and Israelis be left alone, permanent peace is imminent.
For decades Arabs and Muslims killed the Kurds. Israel came to the help of Kurds but not Arabs. The Palestinians are still calling Kurds the second Israel. I do not like Palestinian to be hurt. But I am sure it is because the policies of Arab and Islamist expansionists. Why does not Mirawdali search for sad stories of Iraqi Christians and Syrian Kurds.
My Cousin Gulzar while giving birth an Iranian missile burnt her and the baby together while giving birth, and 2 hours later her husband, ‘my cousin’ with their 3 old son were gassed to death, nobody in the world wrote a word or cared. Our supposedly politicians have often been gullible to sympathize with others, but not ourselves. Once Yaser Arafat told Kurds in Damascus, you often talk about us but not yourselves. I just wondered why no one separates civilians from Hamas, to see how Israel get a hell out of Hamas. They only do that for Iran, so the price of oil to go up, as Iran desperately need cash but nothing else. Palestinians have often been staunch supporters of Saddam while Saddam’s genocide campaign was going on against Kurds, even now if they have chance they would do the same to us, nothing changed much, we still live with fear. .
I meant In Halabja During Chemical attack on 16th March 1988
A very good piece of work; really nice and passionate
As human being we need to feel for other people suffering regardless of their background or history. We as Kurd need more from this example showing their human side kindness and sympathy as what it is in reality if we look at people of south Kurdistan and what they did for various refugees groups. Unfortunately there are small group of Kurds unknowingly acting as group of opportunistic and seeking revenge that is not reflecting true picture of Kurdistan.
Well done Kamal Mirawdeli
I am really surprised to find such a piece of antisemite slander on the Kurdistan tribune. I was rubbing my eyes when I saw that you compare Netanyahu to Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler…do you really believe a mass-muderer and dictator can be compared to a democratic leader? You are belitteling and trivializing the tragedy of the Holocaust and the massacre of Halabja,shame on you!
I am very sad about every innocent girl or boy who has lost their life in war, every child should get the chance to grow up in peace and security, no matter where they are born.
However, it is important to keep in mind that the war in Gaza would have never happened if Hamas didn´t constantly shoot rockets at Israel and infiltrate the nation with terror tunnels to abduct innocent civilians. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas even publicly criticized Hamas on Palestinian television, accusing the group of provoking “unnecessary deaths” and “trading in Palestinian blood” by firing rockets at Israel.The Palestinian Authority’s representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council even acknowledged that Hamas is committing war crimes by targeting civilians and shooting rockets from civilian areas contrasted with how Israel is following international law by warning residents before strikes so as to minimize civilian casualties.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, a non-profit organization based in Gaza City, is no friend to Israel by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, even this group reported on how Israel is giving civilians in targeted structures time to flee by giving them advance notice through warning shots and even calling their phones.
If you do care so much about Palestinian lives, you should protest against Hamas, who are killing their own people while the leaders are sitting comfortably in luxury hotels in Qatar!
Did you forget that Israel is the only country that has constantly supported the Kudish people in our struggle for independence? They have always been speaking up for the rights of Kurdish people, if you look back in history you will see that many politicians, like Moshe Dayan, have sided with the Kurdish cause. They even built a Kurdish learning center in Tel Aviv (http://www.dayan.org/kurdish-studies-program-0) Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with the Kurds since the 1960s, according to Eliezer Tsafrir,a former senior Mossad official, in 1963-1975 Israel had military advisers at the headquarters of Mulla Mustafa Barzani where they trained and supplied the Kurdish units with firearms and field and anti-aircraft artillery. There are many strong connections between Kurdish people and Israel, both fighting against Islamic terrorism and Arab aggression,therefore we should stand together against our shared enemies. During the last week, many Israelis have taken to the streets to protest against ISIS genocide in Shingal and they even helped to get a Kurdish girl receive a lifesaving surgery in an Israeli hospital. Do you really want to abandon such a good relationship?
Regardless of whether I personally agree with all of the sentiments in Dr Kamal’s poem, I am pleased that KT has given a platform to such a talented writer. It is one of the things different about KT, compared to many Kurdish media outlets: it is independent, and it does not answer to any party or state. I do not believe that Dr Kamal’s poem is anti-Semitic. There is a not insignificant minority of Jews who are very critical of Israeli state policies towards the Palestinians (while also abhorring the Hamas agenda). These Jewish people are of course not anti-Semitic, but they view human rights as universal. I hope KT continues to publish views from across the spectrum, without fear or favour.
My plea to the people of Israel: Liberate yourselves by liberating Palestine, Archbishop Tutu:
http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/1.610687?v=66691173328C172D77ED27A198582751