Good Morning Baghdad

Sabah al Khaeyr ya Baghdad!

Baghdad, what will it be today, serve up a bomb for breakfast at your café’?

Do not anticipate a civil war. All hell has broken loose and your children are divided.

Are you at war with your own ego?

Why are you punishing the fruits of your womb? Have you forgotten the pain of your labor that you have endured for centuries?

Is this a punishment or war ~ insurgents everywhere.

I can not lift my head in front of the world ~ you shamed me when you threw me across your border. I became a bastard! I became an outcast!

Everywhere I go I see people frightened.

Why are they whispering, I can not read their thoughts?

My heart can not sink any deeper. It has already broken into one million pieces.

I am afraid to breathe; afraid that my breath will be mistaken for a sigh, confused with a complaint.

I am afraid that with my sigh, tears will well-up in my eyes and I will be discovered.

And thus I succumb to the sunny thoughts of escaping my country one day.

I am not weak, I am an Iraqi. I have lived through a greater betrayal. I have survived an embargo. I have fed my children straw in their bread for breakfast.

Tesbahee ala Khaeyr ya Baghdad!

By: Helen Talia, Chicago
June 18, 2009