Sinan Antoon

Notes from a Lost Country

Rana Al-Jalili

The speaker reiterated what he had mentioned earlier about traditional medications in use now not improving patients but paralyzing their senses and turning them into vegetables instead. 

They said they would turn Iraq into a paradise where new rivers join those already flowing. But they gobbled up everything above and beneath Iraq's ground.

Why does the victim repeatedly internalize its executioner? And it becomes a new, even crueler, executioner

They lived in their tiny shells. Never learned a thing, Never read a book. Their diplomas are fake. Even the physicians among them never even practiced medicine. He sees them sometimes doing interviews on TV, sitting at their desks with all those elegantly bound, and carefully arranged, book sets with shiny titles behind them. Sitting on shelves and perhaps never read, because they are more interested in covers. It's the age of glossy covers. The age of peels and shells. The age of trash.

They shrivelled, but you remained evergreen 

In darkness, your night’s face is a full moon

Fates were cruel to you, but they were stunned