THE BIRDS OF BAGHDAD

By Edgar Nkosi White

(For Kathy Kelly)

Sometimes the stillest fall of all is the fall from grace. There’s no sound to it, only the falling and awake. There're still birds in Baghdad. I know because they wake me without warning before the stillness and the dawn when God pours away the darkness with light.

From my window I see the young boys come out from the stone of the streets barefoot and ready to conquer. Another day in the urban jungle of the city? But what is a city? A city is any place where people come together with a common love a common need. Money and concrete.

Don’t look for camels in Baghdad, you won't find any. What you’ll find instead is only yourself and whatever you’ve come from. Be it New York or London, Johannesburg or Paris. All are the City of Man. The only thing different about Baghdad which is different from your city is that it has the most powerful army on earth poised and waiting at its gates to annihilate it, assist it to freedom and then remake it into its own image.

There're still birds in Baghdad, and trees too. Despite the strange air and water which taste of war and strategies by night. Trees with branches which bend low and straight like white women’s hair. Today is the first of the ten most sacred days of the city. ASHOR. Within the space of these ten days four miracles are said to have taken place. The prophet Abraham (revered by both Arabs and Jews) survived his trial by fire, walking free from the fiery furnace protected and cleansed by God. Then Moses parted the Red Sea and led the Jews from their captivity in Egypt. Egypt, that peculiar place from which people are either fleeing (like the Jews), or fleeing to, like the family of the infant Jesus escaping Herod.

Another miraculous event is the martyrdom of Hussein and his family at Kerbala in 622. Hussein was the son-in-law of the Prophet - son of Ali, the father of the Shia form of Islam.

And the last miracle of all: that I’m here in Baghdad. Here at their new year when the very ground of Iraq trembles and the walls cry out.

And why have I come? I’ve come because like people everywhere I hunger and thirst after miracles. Like you. And also like you I would like to see little David win against Goliath even though like you I have all my Wall Street money on Goliath. The real miracle though is that Iraq itself is still standing after all it's been through. And that they’re not afraid.There’s still dust flying everywhere. The dust of past invasions.

“Tell me something my friend.” The old cab driver turns to me.

“Yes?”

“Why did God curse us with oil?”

“My friend, God didn’t really curse Iraq. If he wanted to really curse you he would‘ve given you gold and diamonds too, like Africa. Then everyone in the world would make absolutely certain that you stay poor forever. If he wanted to he’d curse you like the Congo (Zaire) or like Sierra Leone. No, he doesn’t really want to curse you, just kiss you with a little pain.”

I kiss him two times in the Iraqi way. He laughs. He’s never met a black man before who wasn’t a soldier come to kill him and his children for freedom. When God wants to bless you he gives you things. When he curses you he gives you more.

Iraq still looks good though, like a woman in hiding. She waits. This is nothing new to her. People have been invading for five thousand years. One of the recent ones is Britain. In 1932 Iraq threw them out after being sucked dry for years (they were called a mandate which means: you on your knees, me above). It‘s for this reason and others that Britain has a special desire to return and assist Iraq, assist her back to her knees and give her more of the blessings of freedom. People have been invading Iraq from the beginning of civilization. Six thousand years of Persians and Greeks, Turkomans and the most devastating of all, the Mongols. These destroyed the land so thoroughly that it took three hundred years to bear fruit. The area between the Tigris and Euphrates is too good not to lust after. It could make even a prophet sin and all men are not prophets. First it was the oil, not of the ground, but oil made from dates (of which there are over three hundred varieties in Iraq). Oil was always especially important in biblical times because it cleanses the skin and hair (guarding against lice):

He annointeth my head with oil

my very cup runneth over.

Also as oil for lamps to keep away the terror by night:

...as a lamp unto my feet.

Every army known to man has come to Iraq. If they could make their way, they came. The only difference now is that they come by night and bomb by computer. There is no Darius. No young Alexander the Great who would die at 33 after having conquered the world. No, these now are only faceless men playing at video games who will never see the effects of the 600 bombs an hour they intend to test on the people of Iraq. They want what the Mongols wanted: To break the spirit of the people with 'Shock and Awe.'

And why am I here? I’m here because of a volcano. A volcano not in Iraq. (Iraq doesn’t need any volcanoes, it has enough enemies). No, this volcano is in Montserrat, the tiny West Indian Island of my birth. Britain’s last colony. One she would quite happily surrender but God, being God, loves a good joke - and so Montserrat absolutely won't let go of the good Queen’s hand.

Montserrat, a small, beautiful and insignificant island of some 12,000 souls, in the peaceful dream of the Caribbean. Beautiful idling houses for idle rich need houses in which to idle. Among these was the home and studio of the Beatles and the good Sir George Martin. One day it pleased God to wake the volcano (called Soufriere), sending ash 30,000 feet into the air and liquid lava down the side of the mountain at 100 miles an hour which disturbed the colonials from their drinks, their golf and their tennis. Suddenly people, some of whom had had two homes, were sleeping in their cars instead. Ash fell so heavy on the faces of the people you couldn’t tell black from white. Those who died were those who were foolish enough to go back to retrieve items of great importance to their lives. Televisions and VCR’s. All that remained of them was the bones of their bodies.

The heat from the lava destroyed everything. Suddenly the capital city looked like craters on the moon. The ash from that volcano washed my eyes. I began to see the world as I never saw it. England reluctantly sent a ship to evacuate the island. She’d forgotten that she had any more colonies until the world press reminded her it was bad form to leave your commonwealth charges beneath a raging volcano. Especially one which was destined to become the most studied volcano in the world.

Imagine therefore Britain’s astonishment when over a thousand of the inhabitants refused to go. What in God’s name would make people want to stay and commit suicide? Not only was the volcano extremely active, building its dome daily, but tests showed that the ash which was being released was carcinogenic, possibly leading to eventual cancer or at least emphysema. Having been shamed into at last acting, the British now found that the people refused to leave. Why? It must be the influence of the Irish genes on the people of Montserrat. It leads to ignorance, lunacy and poetry.

You see, Montserrat was first colonized not by the English but by the Irish who were themselves in flight, not from Egypt and Pharaoh, but this time from Britain and Oliver Cromwell--Lord Protector--who was offering them the blessing of the cat-of-nine-tails, and chains, and a peculiar habit they had of firing you from a canon if you refused to renounce your faith. (Those who did however, were rewarded well though, like the Guinness family, who were allowed to open a brewery and become wealthy by giving Ireland so much good drink with which to kill herself and forget).

Everything that the British brought to Africa, they first experimented with on the backs of the Irish. Manacles in particular, and something called 'drawn and quartered' which, as Dr. Johnson said about hanging, "concentrates the mind.” So the Irish it was who came first to Montserrat and found our women much to their liking (as we would later find theirs in Liverpool) and gave us such names as Donnovan, Fergus, and Daley - and a peculiar form of mutton stew we call Goatwater, as well. You find Celtic crosses all over the Island and even our flag has the Irish harp.

I'd like to say that the Irish, because they experienced cruelty at the hands of the British, were more humane in their colonization, but that’s not the way life goes. Just as in America, the Irish became white instead of the 'despised-Irish' by becoming the Police, in Montserrat they became, if not Pharaoh, then Pharaoh’s army. If you were caught stealing, they nailed your ears to a board.

Anyway it must have been Irish madness which stopped us from leaving Montserrat after the volcano. Bless us, we’re funny people. It’s only when we see our island being destroyed does it become beautiful and new again, like a girl you’ve left and returned to. So we stay. I slept outside on the beach and watched my volcano.

But it’s my eyes I want to tell you of. My eyes that got washed in ash there on the beach. I saw it falling from 30,000 feet in the sky. It fell like sand, like snow. So fast and so full that when it fell you couldn’t tell black skin from white or day from night. All illusion had passed and the faces became like stone aged. Anyway these are the things that happen on tiny Caribbean islands. Things fall.

Now my mother, she was a good West Indian. Good in the West Indian way. By this I mean she hoped to serve and save her way into paradise, the way West Indians do. Through hard work and industry.

I was in New York, which is another city. In Manhattan which is also an island, but there are no coconut trees to climb there. No coconut trees maybe but still there’re more West Indians here than can be found on most Caribbean islands, mine included. You see, West Indians gravitate to the job of guards. Security. It’s all that British training and love and awe of uniforms. The Africans might come a close second. They too love a good uniform. So it was that I found myself on that day they call Nine-Eleven, guarding the thing they love most: Money. On Wall Street.

Now, Wall Street (the street walled from the sea) itself is built on the graveyard of slaves. The first commodity sold there was me, and yet that day of all days--the day the high towers fell--I was there guarding their property. Not Pharaoh or his army but a keeper at his gate.

Then everywhere and at once, the smell of ash and flesh. And because my eyes had already been washed with the ash of the volcano, I wasn’t frightened. I saw the same ash fall from the sky like sand, such that you couldn’t tell black skin from white or night from day. And those who died first were the guards who weren’t firemen but foreign. West Indians and Africans who died unnoticed and died, some at six dollars an hour.

And so now, why am I here in Baghdad? Because from Baghdad to New York is only a minute. Pain is pain; once you see it you know it, but only if you let yourself see.

There're still birds in Baghdad. Birds and palm trees where they love to hide. The trees, they remind me so much of my island, I tried to claim them as my own.

“Excuse me, but are those my trees? Did they take them from the Caribbean?”

“No my friend, those are our Palm trees. They’ve been here in Iraq for over three thousand years.”

Well then fair enough, I guess you can keep them. It's not palm trees I’ve come for anyway.

Today is the second of the ten sacred holy days. Today I walk the wards of the children’s hospital. The Al-Mansoor. You asked to come here and yet you don’t want to come, do you? Still you find yourself walking from ward to ward. The doctor is explaining things to you and you nod your head in agreement. Why not? The head isn't so heavy, it can move by itself in agreement. Yes they desperately need medicine and there's none. Yes it’s unfortunate. Something about uranium from the bombs which were dropped. Causing cancer especially in the Iraqi children. Nod and nod again. Turn, and then you see what you’ve been trying so hard not to see. The shadow in the corner of your eye. But you have to look down now, having no choice, at the something-like-a-baby-but-more-like-a–Rhesus-monkey-in-an-incubator. But as you try to turn away you end up looking right into the face of the Shiite woman who you know without any language is the mother. Now, there are three women clad in black but you know without any language and with out any doubt that this is the mother. And you suddenly become very interested in the walls and the alms-house-green paint of the ceiling. Anything to get away from her eyes. But damn, she’s so young. You want to ask her, Who dropped the bomb which is killing your child?" Dropped it years ago and waited. Uranium in the water. Was it an American or an Iraqi soldier? Doesn’t matter, we made them both. First we used Iraq to get Iran and then we used Iran to get… The smell of ash like Montserrat. You want to ask her something but as they say in the islands: “You done know already.”

The Shiite women dress in black. Always. They needn’t go far for death. They’re always ready. They can close the head cloth they wear like a curtain and grieve in private. You bear witness whether you want to or not. You reach in your pocket to find some money to turn away from. But all you find is bits of paper. Paper worthless as words. Notes which you used years before in some class you taught at City College somewhere else in the world: What is conflict? Conflict is tension between two or more forces or when two or more people desire goals obtainable by one only.

Notes found the pocket of a dead jacket. Worthless now as Iraqi money. Not even enough to fill the small hand of a woman.

Wars are nice

When you’re fed with rice

Not so nice when they simmer

But men look good in uniform

And the young girls

They always linger.

Now there’s a thing in Iraq called wind. It moves not only across the desert but through the city as well. It comes out of Basra. In the South. It’s Basra I want to get to but they’re already bombing there although the war hasn’t officially started, and no referee has blown a whistle. The wind blows as it always has because in Iraq only people change. They change from Adam to Abraham and Eve to Sarah but land, it stays the same, unless of course you bomb it with uranium. They say the women in Basra are the most beautiful in Iraq when they're not crying.

Suddenly the wind from Basra comes through the hospital. It comes like the trade winds of the afternoon in Jamaica and Montserrat. If you don’t expect it then it carries you like woman way out into the ocean. But now it’s the child this wind wants. It flies across the room and slams shut a door. Glass shatters everywhere impolitely. And we drop to our knees because we think the invasion has started. Only the doctor maintains his dignity. Priestlike. And doesn’t duck:

“It’s only the wind.” He gestures with his hand and we rise slowly. It’s only the woman’s child the Basra wind wants.

You finally get outside in the street. Your lungs are tight. In Iraq everyone smokes. You need not wonder why. From the nice government SUV which awaits you, Bob Marley is playing:

There’s a natural Mystic blowing in the air.

Listen carefully now and you will hear.

Marley’s music sounds even stronger in Iraq.

I’m glad to escape from the children’s hospital. It pierced me too much. I think I need a church to hide in. A church is always good for hiding. You can shut your eyes, pray and not have to look. It’s the only time you don’t have to see the face of your leader on the wall.

The Eastern Orthodox Church of Iraq. The chalice and the dream. Church is already full. The Christians in Iraq pray, shamed by the fervor of Islam. Everywhere in Iraq is prayer. People pray while they murder or die.

Here the mass is performed in Amharic, the language of Christ.

"Eli, Eli Lamah Sabathani.”

“My lord my lord why has thou foresaken me?”

What I love most about the ceremony off the mass here is that the Priest, having lifted the secret and sacred host of Christ, now gives the touch of grace. But he gives it not to the congregation but instead to the altar boys, the acolytes robed in the blue of Mary. They bring the touch of grace to the congregation. “Likewise after the supper he took wine and when he had blessed it…” But there is no wine here because we’re in Iraq. I’m anointed with the oil. Not the oil which America is coming for. The oil of vineyards which others have come for.

Later, I sit with his Holiness the Archbishop of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He gestures toward me with his ringed hand. The divine purple of privilege rests easy on his shoulders but he doesn't trust it. The Eastern Church believes God can enter anywhere or anyone. And they trust the laity more than the clergy.

“Tea?”

“Thank you.”

“Could you follow the mass?”

“It’s the same mass, only in Amharic. He still dies for us in the end."

“Yes, but would we die for him?”

“Well, we shall soon see, won’t we?”

On the walls are icons over a thousand years old, their faces are dark. I think of the Black Madonna of Poland. Poland, who agreed to join Napoleon's invasion of Haiti. She was hungry then. Now Poland will join with America. She is still hungry.

"You come to my house, I give you my eyes. But if like the wolf you try and take my house, I will eat you. My English, not good."

“Good enough, I got that. The Pope, will he come here to Iraq?”

“He wants to but he’s too old.” He knows that it’s not just Iraq, it’s the whole state of Christ’s church which is on trial here.

A young priest enters and bends just low enough not to call attention to himself and gathers up the cups. Slant-wise a shadow falls. The pain of the cancer ward of the hospital is starting to lift from me. I still can’t forget the mother’s face. The mass helped but not everything leaves.

“What do you tell your parishioners? Those you know will probably die.”

“I tell them to pray without ceasing.”

“You don’t tell them to leave?”

“Why would they leave? They’re Iraqi.” He looks at me and then remembers that I’m a stranger here. The Eastern Church hasn't changed in a thousand years. They say, "Alone we are damned. Together, redeemed." And they mean it.

“Of course, why should they leave?” I remembered the Cathedral of St. John in New York. The time that the Word came alive for me after the towers fell, and the fire. For close to Christmas that year, the Cathedral itself caught fire. And after that, the Priest couldn’t give the same sermon because he saw the waiting eyes of the parishioners and knew they wanted more. It frightened him to truth. Or at least awake.

But fear is a funny thing in man. We do things always to get as far away from it as possible. Fear I mean. It’s only when you know yourself and the terrorism of your own heart that you can speak truth to power.

Like for instance I know I fear the Shiite woman’s eyes. I fear them more than the Montserrat sea. Let me tell you how. It was a day like so. The volcano had erupted and because I was lonely in a time of storm and the waves broke fierce across an open sea, I decided to maybe test God and swim out past the silent eyes of the fishermen who took bets as to whether I’d live or die. I was already known as strange. Who else would live alone on an open beach under a volcano without even a tent?

Now the Montserrat water is a brackish thing. Dark and not the pretty coral of Antigua or the waters of St. Thomas. Montserrat water is not welcoming. It’s sudden and cross like the lash of a bull-whip. They say you never turn your back on Montserrat water or Montserrat women - twice.

And the Barricuda is a peculiar fish with a long body and sharp protruding teeth and a mood known as predatory. It kills quick and comes back to eat. It loves Montserrat water. It’s for this reason the fishermen never swim. Only fools who return from America to live under volcanoes swim.

Pride and Vanity are sisters. They live together, if not in unity at least close by. Not far away dwells the Leopard who waits for the foolish. He need not wait long for me.

I swam far out that day, the thinking, if madness can be called thinking, was that I would wait until the first huge wave broke and then dive beneath it and come up. Usually the further out you go the smoother the water eventually becomes. But not this day. This day was white water time, on the island that's an expression we have for times of trouble. When all you see is white foam--you know.

Today there would be no easing off. The first wave hit. I went beneath but when I came up there was a second wave higher and rougher than the first and if that wasn’t enough a third came behind leaving me no time to take a breath hitting me like a wall. It was then I knew I was dead. It was then I knew Islam. If Islam means: submission, then I submitted. There was no further struggle. I surrendered and thought: So then this is what death is like. Tonight the fishermen would collect their money. To expect them to come out after me and possibly loose their boats would be ridiculous. I wasn’t worth that much to any of them. Any fool could tell you don’t swim in a storm. Not when you see waves breaking against rocks.

Strange thing though was that once I ceased to struggle and went diagonal not against the current but instead across it, the salt of the water held me up. I didn’t know if the current would take me to the island of Redona which was uninhabited at least by people, or maybe across as far as Antigua. I knew I would never make it to Antigua. A Barricuda would finish me long before. But God wasn’t done with me yet. He spilled me like seed against the rocks and I knew that I only had one chance because the rocks are sharp there and if I didn’t grab on I would be pitched out again. So I braced myself and when I was slammed in I held on even though I was bleeding. I crawled up on the shore. Lay on my back because I could move no further and as I looked up at the sky the volcano chose that moment to explode. I had to laugh. This must be the true meaning of between a rock and a hard place. There I was spilled out upon a stone. And then somewhere above me hidden in the trees I could hear the piercing cry of the Oriole, the Montserrat bird. Seldom seen, much given to hiding. But this meant that it too had survived.

And tomorrow you have to go back out again, only further. Otherwise you'll fear the sea, become a fisherman and never swim again.

There are still birds in Baghdad. I know this because today they came early to me singing. Today the tenth day of the new year. ASHOR. They say that when the Prophet comes again he’ll come disguised as a bird. It’s for this reason that in Iraq they play the singing of birds before the morning call to prayer.

St. Francis knew. He moved calm among them, and always spoke with birds. They confessed to him. Told him what trees they hid in. I wanted to tell them, the birds of Baghdad, about the Oriole bird of Monteserrat. A yellow bird sometime orange with its mood. I had wanted to confess to this bird. And close by were the birds of Barbuda where the slaves hid. Barbuda next to Antigua.

I want to go to Basra but they might not let me. The women there are the most beautiful in Iraq except when they cry. The birds can go there though, even though they’re from Baghdad. Even the soldiers let them pass. I wanted to tell the birds about Audubon, the man who painted birds. A black man from Haiti who came to America and painted the dreams of birds. Birds dreaming birds. They never say he’s a black man, though. Only the birds and his family know. America is good at this. She doesn’t so much lie as doesn’t say.

I want to go to Basra, but they might not let me. Not even priests can go. Only birds and soldiers. May I tell a parable then? Once there was a woman who taught her son the moon because the world was too filled with tears. She told him to always look up instead at the moon. So everyday the boy looked and the more he looked the more he wanted to reach there. So he studied and studied. And the woman fasted and prayed until the day he became a great scientist. He showed them how they could reach the moon. He built ships for them, ships for space. They clapped him and gave him prizes. Then put him in a big tank to study more with others who just like him had looked at the moon. But in this building he never got to see the moon. Only videos and charts. So one day he asked:

“But tell me, when will you use me for the moon?”

"It’s not the moon we want. We’ve already been there. It's your ships. With them we can reach the enemy."

“Enemy, which enemy?”

"All of them," they answered.

And so he never looked at the moon again.

The thing is which ever way you walk it doesn’t matter. Eventually you trip over your own morality. Like a man’s third leg. Wherever it points it trips you. There are no countries. Countries are only hotels we stop in. St. Theresa of Avila described life as merely a night spent in a bad hotel. Brief.

The only real thing are corporations. And if a corporation is in three countries at the same time, to whom does it pledge allegiance? One day in Montserrat beneath the volcano, I dreamt I woke and found a company coming down from the air descending like Jacob’s ladder. I woke and found Brown and Root instead. Now, Brown and Root is a corporation which deals in disaster relief. After disasters they miraculously appear and offer their services. A British firm with a British accent. And a can-do attitude.

They put up instant housing on my island. Only one problem. Every house looked alike. They all looked like barracks. Army barracks. They would have done well in Bosnia. Only this wasn’t Bosnia, this was Montserrat in the Caribbean. And when it rained (which it does daily in Montserrat) the houses began to leak. And people couldn’t get into their homes for the mud. It's only when your eyes have been washed in ash that you look deeper into things and go beyond illusion. Illusions like sky scrapers always will stand. They’re perfectly safe. Or a British accent means a British company.

Well Brown and Root turns out not to be British at all. But merely a subsidiary of a much larger corporation called Halliburton. Enter our beloved vice president Dick Cheney, its former CEO.

Halliburton also has the contract to rebuild another little country called Iraq. So like I say, from Baghdad Montserrat is only an eye-blink away. Whichever way you walk you trip over your own morality eventually, no matter how hard you try not to.

America plays the part of villain so well that it’s so easy to point to her and blame. The truth is never that easy. America after all is said and done is not the devil although she in fact likes the role. Likes the guilt. Yet America isn’t the biggest arms dealer in the world, Britain is. Small innocuous-looking bumbling England. The land of Shakespeare and Milton and Hobbes who called life short and brutish. Britain sells more arms than anyone on earth and yet it's America everyone hates first. Is there anyplace in the world that England has not managed to exploit at one time or another? Africa, India, China, the Caribbean (and how about America?) And what she’s left behind are kegs of dynamite waiting for others to trip over. Other fools. Kegs like India and Pakistan. Kegs like Palestine and Israel. Sells arms to everyone in the world and then takes the moral high ground: “Why, pray tell, are these people killing each other?”

She has a special relationship with America. A mandate relationship? Is that what the special relationship is, in other words? Fewer and fewer owning more and more. Britain makes certain that wealth remains firmly in the same hands as always. Class rules as much now as it did two centuries ago. And a major rule of thumb is whatever you liberate in the course of your crusade to bring freedom to the world you must never never never return. Diamonds and gold taken from Africa and India will remain forever with the crown. Artifacts will remain in museums with no foolish talk of reparations. And perhaps after this next visit to Baghdad there may be a few more items added. The playing fields of Eton and the quiet yards of Oxford and Cambridge. And no one asks this simple question: How does so small a nation become the largest arms dealer in the world without any moral out-cry whatsoever? Answer: Everyone is too busy watching the nasty Americans. We say we want to end terrorism but we have first to end our own terror. Breathe slowly and know this. We're all Saddam or dream of being. With our faces high on every wall and people bending low before us. And when we say no, we lie, and truth isn’t in us.

But there're still birds in Baghdad. Let not your heart be troubled for if by some fluke there is a God, then perhaps he doesn't see everything we do, after all. Not the cruel crimes we commit in the name of stability or the threat of communism or for 'reasons of state.' Don't worry, he's not watching. You see, we have this special relationship with him and so he doesn't weigh the bloodshed or hear the scream of the Amiriya shelter. He doesn't hold us to account.

And tonight, we eat fish together. Fish cooked in the Iraqi way. Two hours before a blazing fire of cedar wood.

“Don’t rush, here we take our time. This isn’t microwave, my friend. And if they should invade before we finish, well then, we'll eat our fish in heaven. INSHA'ALLAH.”

“INSHA'ALLAH.”

The music plays as we watch the fire blaze and the fish season. The children come out and laugh at you and disappear again into stone. Suddenly you hear a voice so piercing you have to look up.

“Who is that singing?”

“That? Nadam, Nadam Alkasalee. He was our greatest singer. They say when he died he was so poor he had to beg bread to cut his beard.”

The Iraqis love the expression, so poor he had to beg bread to cut his beard. He died and left nothing except his music to ambush my heart and cloud my eyes with tears. Through Iraq, God gives us a chance to find out who we are. Who we really were all along.

“SHUKRAN.”

And if by some fluke there is a God who listens, tell him I want to go to Basra. They say that the women there are the most beautiful in Iraq except when they cry for their children. I want to go and dry their tears but first I have to dry my own. Yes there're birds in Baghdad, but those too who love not birds but cages.

The stillest fall of all is the fall from grace. There’s no sound to it, only a falling and awake.

Edgar Nkosi White

Baghdad

A.M.D.G