Syrian tragedy has been unfolding almost on daily basis, the avocation of blood has now entered its 8th year and humanity seems to have been sacrificed on the altar of realpolitik and naked power play. Syria has lost more than half of her population through death and migration, with 600,000 killed, a million wounded and 6 million becoming refugees. It’s a tragedy on a gigantic scale.
Not long ago, Syria was the bastion of civilization. According to the World Heritage Convention, the old city of Aleppo reflects the rich and diverse culture of its successive occupants and that Aleppo was ruled successively by Hittites, Assyrians, Akkadians, Greeks, Romans, Umayyads, Ayubis, Memluks, and Ottomans, who left their stamp on the city. Aleppo was once a thriving metropolis, with a strategic location that made it a commercial and cultural center unmatched anywhere in the world.
What is left now is the signs of savagery and rage, as described by Lyse Doucet of the BBC, it’s a city where in what was the rebel-held east are still strewn with mounds of rubble and the detritus of those forced to flee. A child’s’ shoe, a mettle teapot, a t-shirt are all that’s left of their lives. War is etched into this urban landscape; pancaked buildings and rows of houses with their fronts blasted off.
Meanwhile, the world saw blood-stained images of children and elders, and smoke puffs rising out of already destroyed neighborhoods indicate new spate of barrel bombing of eastern Ghouta. Actually, the ugly smoke puffs rising out of the minarets of the city are the collective shame of humanity; yes the humanity died in Ghouta. Unable to write an article on the death and carnage in Syria, I dedicate this small snippet to the Children of Ghouta and all the people of Syria who were massacred and maimed in the dark and dusty allies as a result of the collective failure of Islamic World and the international community:
HUSHED HICCUPS OF A SYRIAN KID
As the jets rumble pass my gutted home
And I glance over the dusty mosque’s dome
The skyline devoid of birds and painted in monochrome
Whispers, choked throats and hushed tones
Screams, sirens and blood brine
Haweija, Deir Ez-Zor, Aleppo, Mayadine
Like blackness in the depth
of a coal mine
The country side has become a large guillotine
Greetings from the hell holes of Aleppo and Damascus
To Tehran, Moscow, Riyadh and Kansas
Of dead bodies and carcass
Ghouta’s blood stained canvas
Shameless death of humanity’s colossus
Ghouta has a dusty wild mosaic
With systems gone archaic
Of burnt streets and shacks
Like a town of smokestacks
Fathers carrying slain bodies of kids in hides
And Kids burying their parents, besides
Atomized neighborhoods, clans and divides
We have become ‘Posters’ for all warring sides
Dogs gnawing at the flesh of
human bodies
The stench of blood in dark allies
Tanks and guns passing
through valleys
Daish traumatizing us through rallies
And Assad counting death tolls
and tallys
Dead bodies tangled in the rubble and broken chairs
We hold daily funeral prayers
Ah, Ghouta has become a graveyard in media glare
No more rainbows on our sky,
my dear
No gaggling, no laughing, it’s a
city in despair
Life has frozen in a dark tunnel of corpses and coffins
Of phosphorus smells and toxins
A city of human dust bins
A slaughterhouse of Muslims
You cannot bury the dead in time
Wait for intervals in the
bombing rhyme
In daily routine of gun fire chime
The earth is soiled, filthy and begrime
And there are no seasons in
Aleppo, just burnt grass
No more chirping sounds of sparrows, alas
No bustle of market, no school,
no class
Life is like walking daily
on broken glass
No colors, no play, no hobbies
No memories left in the house
of Zombies
Daily count of dead bodies
No meadows, gardens and
green Wadies
Grim destiny and the short span
of smiles
Fetching water from ten miles
Our scary lifestyles
Heaps of boulders and trash piles
I am hushed and scared
Uncertainty stalks the neighborhood, left uncared
Dark shadows of snipers on roof tops, prepared
The shrieks of someone slaughtered or snared
Or hurled down from a five story block, score squared
Here humanity is impaired
The sparrows of Ghouta are no more
My young brother lying bare on bloodstained floor
I peep through the front yard’s broken door
For there is nothing left but a twisted baby cot
As I clean my brother’s blood clot
And look up to God in distressed fraught
I see the angels descending
for final escort
His bruised legs are getting cold
And the blood oozing out uncontrolled
My tears cross the threshold
His hushed hiccups becoming breathless, behold
n The author is a freelance journalist.