Aleppo Diary

Translated from Arabic by the author and Norbert Hirschhorn1.Writing hurts.The blood dripping down the tv screenpoisons the air,stains the couch with what looks likedried coffee. We touch, trembling,afraid of infection.Our backs bent as if descending to hell,red and brown rust spotsreflect on our faces.We rub our heads, turn away,and lick the salt from tears.They who crawl from street to screenleave green traces on the tarmac,which burst into bushes of basil.They throw us a flower and die quicklyto spare us from shame.Take off your shoes, walk on broken glass,for now you are in a sacred valley.2.I sit on my balcony. Aleppo, spread before me, black and deserted. A clatter of dishes in the dark means life does go on. No other sound save sporadic gunfire somewhere distant until a peculiar whistle before the shell explodes. Someone leaves this earth with a dry throat. Aleppo before meremains black, and still. Those huge shadows might be trees, or childhood goblins or black vapours exhaled by women waiting for their children, they already numbers in a news bulletin.3.Perhaps a time to water plants growingby a fallen wall, a shattered alleyin the black-and-white city named Aleppo.In the gap between two houses, a sparrowtrembles in a child's hand, and a snipercombs his pomaded hair behind a stackof books shielding against death from the sky.Inside the church an angel, wings outstretched,pierced by tears and bullets, and a boysmutched with dust, laughing. The sniper sucksseeds from a pomegranate, lets his riflerest against a wall. In Aleppo.In Aleppo, Death grows in alleys like arotted plant, pours from the sky:nuts, bolts, tnt and chlorine.Death stares into the mirrorfor one moment, turns, sights,pulls the trigger.People on bread lines know all this. Alsochildren reciting in school.And a hunchbacked old man

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