I AM AN IRAQI MAN

I AM AN IRAQI MAN

I am an Iraqi man; my life was postponed and my face was stolen by wars. I know nothing about beauty or Detain Falls.
I am an Arab man, and like you, I feel the value of life and the depth of a smile. I have family and children, and like you; I love coffee and eat eggs and cheese for breakfast.
I am a farmer from the south, and all what I carry in my pockets are oranges.
I am from here, the pain land; my father is the groaning and my mother is the weeping.
I am the war’s son; my memory was kneaded by her rugged dance and my heart colored with her gloomy soul. When the tales of the mountains ended at her cold knees, you will find me in her smoky corners with my dreadful shivering.
I am a doctor in my small town’s hospital, and in addition to this, I love the poets. The poets and the physicians are twins and they had drunk the spiritual milk from the same hopeful breast.
I believe in poetry and always spend a huge effort in beseeching a paper to hang my dreams on her chest.
I am a good reader and you know the poet as well as the physician is a good reader.
I am a Babylonian poet; I love the blossoms and the colors of the Kashmiri people’s dresses. I love Simic’s poems very much and I wish to visit the poetry institutes in New York, but I am banned, so I am sad, and I will tell this story to my children.
I am from the Middle East, and this is all my crime.
I am an Iraqi man waking up every morning with a poetic soul and a rhythmic speech and standing with my painting beside that tall tree but I can’t forget that mud which we had kneaded with our pain and the sand which we had eaten with our bread.

Anwer Ghani
Consultant Nephrologist,Author, Editor
Babylon,Iraq