The Baskets of Baghdad
Fifty reprinted poems from the original 1967 text; a musical score of the title poem; Baghdad and Victoria, BC intermingled in a requiem short story; and a historical, cultural, literary essay in poetry and prose on the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Blog Overview
This blog is dedicated to one of the many books my grandfather has written. I have created this blog in order to publicize my grandfathers meaningful poems and to share a piece of Baghdad's past. This book is not only filled with wonderful poems that explain the culture and express the beauty of Baghdad, where my grandfather used to teach, but they capture the history of the town. Many of Baghdad's beautiful monuments have been destroyed due to the warfare that has occurred within it's beautiful landscape. This book provides readers with a historical vision through poetic tales of the past.
Friday, January 19, 2007
The Baskets of Baghdad
Upon the rainbowed bridges of Baghdad,
Brimmed baskets, balanced carefully
Above black abas flowing free,
Glide through thick crowds, responsibly.
Here are some curving fish
Swimming on ice in a dish;
And here some peppers, red and green,
Mixed with peeled onions, white and clean;
Rose pomegranates and yellow pears
Piled high like beaded palace stairs;
Some frightened chickens, staring down
To make a feathered jewel-eyed crown.
Melons striped and shimmering grapes,
Heaps of eggs and mounds of dates,
Leban, biscuits, nuts, and bread
All ride in state upon the head.
Brimming baskets lifted high
Raise rainbowed bridges in the sky.
Brimmed baskets, balanced carefully
Above black abas flowing free,
Glide through thick crowds, responsibly.
Here are some curving fish
Swimming on ice in a dish;
And here some peppers, red and green,
Mixed with peeled onions, white and clean;
Rose pomegranates and yellow pears
Piled high like beaded palace stairs;
Some frightened chickens, staring down
To make a feathered jewel-eyed crown.
Melons striped and shimmering grapes,
Heaps of eggs and mounds of dates,
Leban, biscuits, nuts, and bread
All ride in state upon the head.
Brimming baskets lifted high
Raise rainbowed bridges in the sky.
Sleeping Child
Karachi, Pakistan
Brown and beautiful
in her blue dress,
The child slept
beneath the shop shelves
Where her father kept his needlework,
Brass wares and hand-carved elephants.
White-robed, he sat beside her,
Sewing slowly, wrinkle-eyed,
Seeming to stitch contentment
into their obscure lives.
It was the quiet time.
No shoppers crowded through
the foot-scarred streets;
No motion of the sun betrayed eternity.
And then I chanced upon
this Joseph and his child,
This mortal, deathless pair,
Sewing the soft, sweet threads
of swift humanity;
Sleeping the guileless sleep
of blue-gowned childhood,
Brown and beautiful.
Brown and beautiful
in her blue dress,
The child slept
beneath the shop shelves
Where her father kept his needlework,
Brass wares and hand-carved elephants.
White-robed, he sat beside her,
Sewing slowly, wrinkle-eyed,
Seeming to stitch contentment
into their obscure lives.
It was the quiet time.
No shoppers crowded through
the foot-scarred streets;
No motion of the sun betrayed eternity.
And then I chanced upon
this Joseph and his child,
This mortal, deathless pair,
Sewing the soft, sweet threads
of swift humanity;
Sleeping the guileless sleep
of blue-gowned childhood,
Brown and beautiful.
Once in Louisiana
Once in Louisiana, long ago,
I walked at evening on a gravel road
That stretched forever toward
the sinking sun.
Not a tree, not a bird,
Nor any colored stone
do I remember now —
But only that I was alone
At sundown on an empty road.
Today the ageless sun swings down
toward Abu Ghraib,
An old Iraqi town;
And on this roadway to the west,
I wonder where the years have gone,
And if I still am walking on
Louisiana stone.
I walked at evening on a gravel road
That stretched forever toward
the sinking sun.
Not a tree, not a bird,
Nor any colored stone
do I remember now —
But only that I was alone
At sundown on an empty road.
Today the ageless sun swings down
toward Abu Ghraib,
An old Iraqi town;
And on this roadway to the west,
I wonder where the years have gone,
And if I still am walking on
Louisiana stone.
The Lost List
Recollections and a Requiem
The Gulf War of 1991
An early morning rain, fresh and inviting, was falling
softly, almost secretly, in Victoria. It was the dormant,
damp, often mild season when long dead leaves of
summer creep forth from hidden places like
substantial ghosts to lie in the rain. The spring-like air
curled beneath Elizabeth Simms' umbrella and brushed
her face; but she walked numbly through the soft thin
silk of the rain, feeling apprehensive and helpless.
Her mind was in Baghdad — a city sacred to her
through long years -- and this was the day, almost
certainly, that it would be bombed. During a school
year long ago, brown, beautiful faces had watched her
almost worshipfully, listening to her talk about
Shakespeare and Keats and Hardy. Now she knew the
streets of Baghdad were filled with panic and fear, not
with noisy cars and creaking carts, occasional camels,
flocks of sheep, busy voices and hurrying feet.
With downcast eyes, she walked slowly, solemnly
along the deserted avenue toward the Blethering Tea
Shop a few blocks from her cottage. A ragged piece of
paper, tangled in a cluster of leaves along the curb,
caught her eye. Her first inclination was to pick it up,
not so much out of curiosity as from a vague desire to
remove a kind of intruder or blemish from the world
of the rain. She dismissed the impulse and went on to
the tea shop where she often began her mornings.
Glaring headlines in newspapers in the foyer
heightened her distress: "Americans Poised to Bomb
Iraq; Desert Storm to Be Unleashed." She felt vacant
and chilled, fearing to visualize what was going to
happen on the soil and to the people she loved. Her
days in Baghdad had been exotic; exhilarating, and
magical — days so precious they could never be lost.
Every day of the school year she had traveled from
Mamoun on the outskirts of Baghdad across town to
Waziria to teach at the university. Looking down from
the upper deck of a red British-style bus, she delighted
in the colourful chaos of carters and cars, countless
kiosks and crowds, sidewalk vendors, and headborne
baskets of fish, leban and fruit. She was at home in
the city, "happy as the day was long."
Whenever she missed her bus and crowded into a taxi,
there were deferential smiles — always attempts to
exchange some words beyond simple greetings and
goodbyes.
Whether traveling by bus or taxi, Elizabeth had to
transfer at the Martyrs Square, one of the busiest
interchanges in Baghdad. Buses, taxis and commuters
congregated and departed in continuous waves, filling
the very air with the feeling of imperative destinations.
Elizabeth was at one with the crowd, anxiously
waiting for a bus, or flagging a taxi.
The shrill calls of vendors punctuated the heavy chug
and exhaust of the engines. On an island in the middle
of the square, soapbox orators directed unheeded
messages to the bustling parade of passers-by.
Elizabeth crossed the Tigris every school day over the
Martyrs Bridge. When she returned home at evening,
she sometimes took another route, wishing to look at
the city from a different rainbowed bridge. Crossing
the placid river, she was immortal, a wonder-filled
child, surrounded by Eden alive and ancient, riding
back and forth over the waters of the beginning
oblivious to time's swift passing and the sovereign
might of melancholy.
Seated at tea, she looked out intently at the rainwashed
street, trying to dismiss her fears. Her
thoughts turned back to the water-soaked scrap of
paper she had seen. A strange restlessness came with
the recollection. She felt oddly possessed by the notion
that a list of some extraordinary significance was
scribbled on the paper and that it had something to
do with her.
She chided herself. She was overtired. Her night had
been nearly sleepless, her worries about the war
constant; so her mind had drifted into irrational
assumptions over a discarded or lost piece of paper.
Still, she was unable to entirely suppress conjectures
about it. She wondered what, if anything, was written
upon it and who might have lost it.
She recalled Granny Weatherall in K.A. Porter's story
saying, "It's bitter to lose things!" and nodded in
decided agreement. Then she smiled inwardly for
allowing the supposed list to taunt and tease her as if
she herself had actually misplaced something.
But the matter was not closed. On the way back to
her cottage, Elizabeth saw an elderly man near the
spot where she had seen the list. She felt certain that
she saw him bend down and pick it up although she
was quite some distance away and could not be
absolutely certain. The man disappeared from her
view, turning the corner into Clive Street. When she
arrived with a twinge of anxiety at the spot where she
had seen the paper, it had, like the man, disappeared.
She felt irritated — cheated! The man had somehow
impinged upon or even trespassed upon her territory.
Then she caught herself a second time and actually
laughed aloud at herself in the empty street. Hadn't
she, after all, nearly picked up the piece of paper?
Why begrudge anyone who had felt the same
inclination? Perhaps a list of some kind belonged to
him. What difference could it possibly make if it
didn't?
At home, the list evaporated from her thoughts. She
was drawn to the continuous dispatches of impending
war — the uncompromising resolution of the United
States to "storm" the desert and bomb Baghdad. She
shuddered at the specious rhetoric of war — civilians
would be in relatively small danger; no harm was
meant to the Iraqi people. When she heard reports
that installations to the west of Baghdad were
considered to be prime targets, her fears became even
more intense and vivid.
She had lived with her husband in Mamoun, a suburb
west of town. The district was a mélange of
moderately large brick houses, tin-walled shops, and
open areas where chickens and sheep wandered about
in brown dust and niggardly vegetation.
The house that Elizabeth and her husband rented was
a tall brick structure with a walled-in garden, located
within sight of the highway leading to the west — to
the College of Agriculture at Abu Graib; to the vast
dust-blown desert and the black rocks of Jordan; to
Amman and Jerusalem and Damascus.
Elizabeth had no idea what was meant by military
installations; but she visualized the whole district
between Mamoun and Abu Graib as having been
expanded into a target area for U.S. bombers.
She was torn by an irrational anxiety for the house
she had lived in and for the agricultural school where
her husband had taught. Most of all, she feared for her
neighbors who were engraved unchanged in her
memory — the rotund, cheerful shopkeeper Jassim,
still trying to teach her Arabic as he learned English;
the lad Ayad from next door, bringing gifts almost
every day of delicious flat bread, along with fly-ridden
yogurt; the kerosene man with his donkey-drawn
wagon, surrounded by children; familiar bus and taxi
drivers slowing down forever where she waited every
morning on her way to work. It was as if the
threatened war caught and sealed her back in time,
even as she had been caught up in a timeless
existence while in Baghdad. Every trip through the
city was exciting and eternal; every day in the
classroom green and golden.
Nonetheless, she recalled her first days in the
classroom with a mixture of amusement and pain. The
variety she had seen in the Baghdad streets absolutely
vanished. She walked into rooms filled with identical
faces and forms. She could distinguish the sexes, of
course; but in every classroom she found herself in the
midst of look-alikes!
Not only identical in features, but in dress: all of the
males in the same suits and ties; all of the females
wearing the same jewelry and identical black miniskirts.
Her mind became a blur before a dark-eyed
wave of brown faces; she herself stood shuddering on
a distant shore — honey-blonde and self-consciously
white.
Not being able to differentiate frightened and
embarrassed her, and the same traumatic failure was
repeated in all of her early meetings. Some
consolation came from her husband Allen who, in his
first classes, experienced the same confusion and fear.
Allen compared his dilemma with once having viewed
a gallery of fascinating paintings by schizophrenics —
the same intricate and complicated images reproduced
exactingly over and over again.
Later, the two could recall those early days and laugh
comfortably together, having quickly learned the
names of all of their students. Shortly, it became a
common practice to go with them on week-end
excursions. They traveled to the Golden Mosque of
Samarra, to the ruins of Babylon, to the Holy Cities of
the South, to small villages on the banks of the Tigris
and Euphrates.
At picnic time, a banquet of food miraculously
appeared, placed upon tablecloths spread upon the
ground — lamb and chicken, fruits and vegetables, flat
bread and cheese, dolma and dates. There was singing
and dancing and games, and always amusing
spontaneous lessons in language.
In the bus everyone ate "hub" — pumpkin seeds,
sunflower seeds, and pistachios. The husks were
tossed, as if by communal obligation, on the floor.
Singing in the bus was continuous, mostly in Arabic,
but intermixed with snatches of English.
Echoes and visions and faces congealed and focused
and floated through Elizabeth's mind. She had had
some correspondence but seen no one from Baghdad
through the years. Always there was the intention of
revisiting Iraq, but time and circumstances intervened.
During and after the Iran-Iraq war, all contacts were
lost.
Elizabeth and Allen had managed to travel all the way
to Samarkand, but that was during the conflict
between Iran and Iraq. In Samarkand, the mosques
and markets, the dress and the language reminded
them of Iraq, and they longed to go to Baghdad. Even
after Allen's death, Elizabeth longed from time to time
to revisit Baghdad. Even now, at the moment of
impending conflict, she longed to be in her adopted
city. And her mind was there.
Throughout the day, she kept turning the television
off and on wishing to shut out the inevitable which
she knew she must face. She busied herself halfheartedly
at chores, tried to read, called her friend
Agnes next door several times.
The rain continued to fall all day, but in the late hours
of the afternoon became quite heavy. She looked out
at the gray skies and unrelenting rain as at an infinite
expanse of inexplicable despair.
Agnes came over soon after Elizabeth's third phone
call, sensing the mounting distress in her voice which
was characteristically calm and resonant. Tea and
biscuits were set while the two repeated snatches of
the concerned conversation exchanged on the phone.
Elizabeth sipped her tea, but was soon up pacing. She
carried her serviette and began twisting it in her
hands.
Agnes began to worry. She suggested that Elizabeth
take a sedative. Elizabeth was emphatic: she would
not! The culprits and the brainwashed needed
sedatives, not she! Agnes had never heard Elizabeth
speak in such a fashion. She suggested that they turn
the TV off and take a walk in the rain.
Elizabeth did not want to walk in the rain. She had
been walking in the rain all day! She had walked in
the rain all her life!
Agnes knew very little about the symptoms of
nervous exhaustion but felt Elizabeth was on the
verge. She began to be greatly troubled, not knowing
how to manage Elizabeth's comments and behaviour.
Suddenly, Elizabeth was kneeling in front of the
television screen speaking derisively into the face of
the newscaster. "Oh yes, of course, of course, they'll
have to bomb the bridges! All of them, of course! The
Northgate Bridge and the Second Bridge and Martyrs
Bridge and the Southgate Bridge and the New Bridge
— all of them! And they musn't forget to destroy my
house and Bus 21; and to mutilate my sheep and
chickens and camels and mosques and Mona and
Farej, Abbas and Zahia, Majid and Nawal, Makia and
Mohammed!" Her face was buried in her hands in a
flood of hysterical tears. Agnes knelt beside her,
weeping, trying to console her, not knowing what to
say.
"Elizabeth! Elizabeth! It hasn't happened. Perhaps it
won't happen. Please, come sit down. I think we
should call Dr. Miller."
Elizabeth struggled to her feet, dizzy and nauseated.
Agnes helped her to the divan.
No, Elizabeth didn't want Dr. Miller to be called. She
wanted the television turned off. She would get hold
of herself; she just needed a little rest. She'd stretch
out on the divan, and after awhile, if she didn't feel
better, they would call Dr. Miller.
Elizabeth was in her late sixties and had always been
remarkably energetic and healthy; yet, the strain of
the last several days had been constant and, finally,
unbearable. It was as if her whole life were being
undermined; as if she were being catapulted back into
her youth and the joys she had cherished and
nourished were about to be cruelly destroyed.
She turned to stone on the sofa, absolutely immobile;
so much so that Agnes could scarcely see her
breathing.
She breathed, or scarcely breathed, in Baghdad. She
stood immobile, frozen, sculptured by the roadway,
moveless as death, waiting for the bus from Abu
Graib. Along the road before her, transfixed, wooden
as toys, stretched a convoy of tanks and soldiercrammed
trucks. No one, nothing stirred. The wind
was whisperless, the desert without dust. No veil, black
robe, or palm leaf fluttered. No carter, camel, boot, or
pebble moved. All currents in the Tigris ceased; the
sun was captured in its course, all time suspended.
White flocks of storks above the North Gate Mosque
were stilled in flight like painted ghosts upon the
dome of heaven. The universe was carved in wax and
stone, a single monument, motionless, fervorless,
soundless, sealed in a timeless syncope. All movement
was arrested and waited as in agony for some
momentous signal to begin.
She knew if she should raise her hand the dreadful
armistice with time would cease; the bus would come
from Abu Graib, the convoy move, and every grain of
sand be witness to untold calamity.
She would not move! She would not let one bird song
rise up from the ground, the winds to breathe, the
Tigris to start flowing. She would prevent the advent
of disaster by standing by the roadway fixed forever!
She would not turn back toward her house to wave
goodbye or ever board the bus again to cross the city
to Waziria.
A tear coursed down her cheek and set the sun and
moon in motion.
A whirlwind swallowed up the moments of stilled
time! A great collision rocked the Martyrs Bridge and
earthquaked through the world's foundations. The
severed heads of screaming storks rained blood into
the trembling river.
She ran in terror through the streets, rending her
garments, crawling, raving, looking wildly for herself
among the ruins; rushing from black-robed woman to
black-robed woman beseeching everyone to give her
back her child.
"Allah be praised, Allah be praised,” echoed hollowly
from headborne load to headborne load, from molten
skies, from hidden passageways, from every stone,
from widening fissures in the pavement.
She rushed down avenues of pain, frenzied, tormented,
undone by the cruel ways of Allah, shouting,
imploring, "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"
The crater that devoured her was a whirling funnel —
a vast, deep hourglass filling swiftly, inexorably with
sand. Her body floated, swirled, and eddied among
dismembered dolls, demented birds, and shards of
fallen monuments.
Suddenly, the buoyant sands released her and she fell
— headlong — through a narrow crevasse into the
nether spaces of the universe. Through the dens of
Nightmare and her Ninefold, age after age, eon after
eon, she fell the length of time into the smoke-filled,
blackened smithy of primeval pain — stretched out
upon an ancient anvil, wrapped in chains.
Agnes saw her stir and was relieved to see some
movement; but Elizabeth was lying, in solitary vigil,
upon a block of concrete beneath the broken girders
of the Martyrs Bridge. The clamour and terror of
armour and sirens had ceased; the feet of the living
had drifted away through the twilight to vague
destinations. Circled in sackcloth, a stoic moon had
climbed the sky, whitening the great shattered bones
of the bridge, broken and strewn in the river.
Elizabeth heard the waters washing about the
desecrated fragments of the fallen bridge. The waters
were crimson. The bodies of the slain floated and
swirled in the debris of the bridge. No faces were
familiar. In the moonlight and crimson no features
were distinguishable, none different. All were brown
leaves come secretly forth to lie in the Tigris at
evening.
Elizabeth knew that the thin green-covered class book,
in which she had written their names, floated
somewhere among them; but it had been carried by
merciless currents beyond the reach of her vision.
The Gulf War of 1991
An early morning rain, fresh and inviting, was falling
softly, almost secretly, in Victoria. It was the dormant,
damp, often mild season when long dead leaves of
summer creep forth from hidden places like
substantial ghosts to lie in the rain. The spring-like air
curled beneath Elizabeth Simms' umbrella and brushed
her face; but she walked numbly through the soft thin
silk of the rain, feeling apprehensive and helpless.
Her mind was in Baghdad — a city sacred to her
through long years -- and this was the day, almost
certainly, that it would be bombed. During a school
year long ago, brown, beautiful faces had watched her
almost worshipfully, listening to her talk about
Shakespeare and Keats and Hardy. Now she knew the
streets of Baghdad were filled with panic and fear, not
with noisy cars and creaking carts, occasional camels,
flocks of sheep, busy voices and hurrying feet.
With downcast eyes, she walked slowly, solemnly
along the deserted avenue toward the Blethering Tea
Shop a few blocks from her cottage. A ragged piece of
paper, tangled in a cluster of leaves along the curb,
caught her eye. Her first inclination was to pick it up,
not so much out of curiosity as from a vague desire to
remove a kind of intruder or blemish from the world
of the rain. She dismissed the impulse and went on to
the tea shop where she often began her mornings.
Glaring headlines in newspapers in the foyer
heightened her distress: "Americans Poised to Bomb
Iraq; Desert Storm to Be Unleashed." She felt vacant
and chilled, fearing to visualize what was going to
happen on the soil and to the people she loved. Her
days in Baghdad had been exotic; exhilarating, and
magical — days so precious they could never be lost.
Every day of the school year she had traveled from
Mamoun on the outskirts of Baghdad across town to
Waziria to teach at the university. Looking down from
the upper deck of a red British-style bus, she delighted
in the colourful chaos of carters and cars, countless
kiosks and crowds, sidewalk vendors, and headborne
baskets of fish, leban and fruit. She was at home in
the city, "happy as the day was long."
Whenever she missed her bus and crowded into a taxi,
there were deferential smiles — always attempts to
exchange some words beyond simple greetings and
goodbyes.
Whether traveling by bus or taxi, Elizabeth had to
transfer at the Martyrs Square, one of the busiest
interchanges in Baghdad. Buses, taxis and commuters
congregated and departed in continuous waves, filling
the very air with the feeling of imperative destinations.
Elizabeth was at one with the crowd, anxiously
waiting for a bus, or flagging a taxi.
The shrill calls of vendors punctuated the heavy chug
and exhaust of the engines. On an island in the middle
of the square, soapbox orators directed unheeded
messages to the bustling parade of passers-by.
Elizabeth crossed the Tigris every school day over the
Martyrs Bridge. When she returned home at evening,
she sometimes took another route, wishing to look at
the city from a different rainbowed bridge. Crossing
the placid river, she was immortal, a wonder-filled
child, surrounded by Eden alive and ancient, riding
back and forth over the waters of the beginning
oblivious to time's swift passing and the sovereign
might of melancholy.
Seated at tea, she looked out intently at the rainwashed
street, trying to dismiss her fears. Her
thoughts turned back to the water-soaked scrap of
paper she had seen. A strange restlessness came with
the recollection. She felt oddly possessed by the notion
that a list of some extraordinary significance was
scribbled on the paper and that it had something to
do with her.
She chided herself. She was overtired. Her night had
been nearly sleepless, her worries about the war
constant; so her mind had drifted into irrational
assumptions over a discarded or lost piece of paper.
Still, she was unable to entirely suppress conjectures
about it. She wondered what, if anything, was written
upon it and who might have lost it.
She recalled Granny Weatherall in K.A. Porter's story
saying, "It's bitter to lose things!" and nodded in
decided agreement. Then she smiled inwardly for
allowing the supposed list to taunt and tease her as if
she herself had actually misplaced something.
But the matter was not closed. On the way back to
her cottage, Elizabeth saw an elderly man near the
spot where she had seen the list. She felt certain that
she saw him bend down and pick it up although she
was quite some distance away and could not be
absolutely certain. The man disappeared from her
view, turning the corner into Clive Street. When she
arrived with a twinge of anxiety at the spot where she
had seen the paper, it had, like the man, disappeared.
She felt irritated — cheated! The man had somehow
impinged upon or even trespassed upon her territory.
Then she caught herself a second time and actually
laughed aloud at herself in the empty street. Hadn't
she, after all, nearly picked up the piece of paper?
Why begrudge anyone who had felt the same
inclination? Perhaps a list of some kind belonged to
him. What difference could it possibly make if it
didn't?
At home, the list evaporated from her thoughts. She
was drawn to the continuous dispatches of impending
war — the uncompromising resolution of the United
States to "storm" the desert and bomb Baghdad. She
shuddered at the specious rhetoric of war — civilians
would be in relatively small danger; no harm was
meant to the Iraqi people. When she heard reports
that installations to the west of Baghdad were
considered to be prime targets, her fears became even
more intense and vivid.
She had lived with her husband in Mamoun, a suburb
west of town. The district was a mélange of
moderately large brick houses, tin-walled shops, and
open areas where chickens and sheep wandered about
in brown dust and niggardly vegetation.
The house that Elizabeth and her husband rented was
a tall brick structure with a walled-in garden, located
within sight of the highway leading to the west — to
the College of Agriculture at Abu Graib; to the vast
dust-blown desert and the black rocks of Jordan; to
Amman and Jerusalem and Damascus.
Elizabeth had no idea what was meant by military
installations; but she visualized the whole district
between Mamoun and Abu Graib as having been
expanded into a target area for U.S. bombers.
She was torn by an irrational anxiety for the house
she had lived in and for the agricultural school where
her husband had taught. Most of all, she feared for her
neighbors who were engraved unchanged in her
memory — the rotund, cheerful shopkeeper Jassim,
still trying to teach her Arabic as he learned English;
the lad Ayad from next door, bringing gifts almost
every day of delicious flat bread, along with fly-ridden
yogurt; the kerosene man with his donkey-drawn
wagon, surrounded by children; familiar bus and taxi
drivers slowing down forever where she waited every
morning on her way to work. It was as if the
threatened war caught and sealed her back in time,
even as she had been caught up in a timeless
existence while in Baghdad. Every trip through the
city was exciting and eternal; every day in the
classroom green and golden.
Nonetheless, she recalled her first days in the
classroom with a mixture of amusement and pain. The
variety she had seen in the Baghdad streets absolutely
vanished. She walked into rooms filled with identical
faces and forms. She could distinguish the sexes, of
course; but in every classroom she found herself in the
midst of look-alikes!
Not only identical in features, but in dress: all of the
males in the same suits and ties; all of the females
wearing the same jewelry and identical black miniskirts.
Her mind became a blur before a dark-eyed
wave of brown faces; she herself stood shuddering on
a distant shore — honey-blonde and self-consciously
white.
Not being able to differentiate frightened and
embarrassed her, and the same traumatic failure was
repeated in all of her early meetings. Some
consolation came from her husband Allen who, in his
first classes, experienced the same confusion and fear.
Allen compared his dilemma with once having viewed
a gallery of fascinating paintings by schizophrenics —
the same intricate and complicated images reproduced
exactingly over and over again.
Later, the two could recall those early days and laugh
comfortably together, having quickly learned the
names of all of their students. Shortly, it became a
common practice to go with them on week-end
excursions. They traveled to the Golden Mosque of
Samarra, to the ruins of Babylon, to the Holy Cities of
the South, to small villages on the banks of the Tigris
and Euphrates.
At picnic time, a banquet of food miraculously
appeared, placed upon tablecloths spread upon the
ground — lamb and chicken, fruits and vegetables, flat
bread and cheese, dolma and dates. There was singing
and dancing and games, and always amusing
spontaneous lessons in language.
In the bus everyone ate "hub" — pumpkin seeds,
sunflower seeds, and pistachios. The husks were
tossed, as if by communal obligation, on the floor.
Singing in the bus was continuous, mostly in Arabic,
but intermixed with snatches of English.
Echoes and visions and faces congealed and focused
and floated through Elizabeth's mind. She had had
some correspondence but seen no one from Baghdad
through the years. Always there was the intention of
revisiting Iraq, but time and circumstances intervened.
During and after the Iran-Iraq war, all contacts were
lost.
Elizabeth and Allen had managed to travel all the way
to Samarkand, but that was during the conflict
between Iran and Iraq. In Samarkand, the mosques
and markets, the dress and the language reminded
them of Iraq, and they longed to go to Baghdad. Even
after Allen's death, Elizabeth longed from time to time
to revisit Baghdad. Even now, at the moment of
impending conflict, she longed to be in her adopted
city. And her mind was there.
Throughout the day, she kept turning the television
off and on wishing to shut out the inevitable which
she knew she must face. She busied herself halfheartedly
at chores, tried to read, called her friend
Agnes next door several times.
The rain continued to fall all day, but in the late hours
of the afternoon became quite heavy. She looked out
at the gray skies and unrelenting rain as at an infinite
expanse of inexplicable despair.
Agnes came over soon after Elizabeth's third phone
call, sensing the mounting distress in her voice which
was characteristically calm and resonant. Tea and
biscuits were set while the two repeated snatches of
the concerned conversation exchanged on the phone.
Elizabeth sipped her tea, but was soon up pacing. She
carried her serviette and began twisting it in her
hands.
Agnes began to worry. She suggested that Elizabeth
take a sedative. Elizabeth was emphatic: she would
not! The culprits and the brainwashed needed
sedatives, not she! Agnes had never heard Elizabeth
speak in such a fashion. She suggested that they turn
the TV off and take a walk in the rain.
Elizabeth did not want to walk in the rain. She had
been walking in the rain all day! She had walked in
the rain all her life!
Agnes knew very little about the symptoms of
nervous exhaustion but felt Elizabeth was on the
verge. She began to be greatly troubled, not knowing
how to manage Elizabeth's comments and behaviour.
Suddenly, Elizabeth was kneeling in front of the
television screen speaking derisively into the face of
the newscaster. "Oh yes, of course, of course, they'll
have to bomb the bridges! All of them, of course! The
Northgate Bridge and the Second Bridge and Martyrs
Bridge and the Southgate Bridge and the New Bridge
— all of them! And they musn't forget to destroy my
house and Bus 21; and to mutilate my sheep and
chickens and camels and mosques and Mona and
Farej, Abbas and Zahia, Majid and Nawal, Makia and
Mohammed!" Her face was buried in her hands in a
flood of hysterical tears. Agnes knelt beside her,
weeping, trying to console her, not knowing what to
say.
"Elizabeth! Elizabeth! It hasn't happened. Perhaps it
won't happen. Please, come sit down. I think we
should call Dr. Miller."
Elizabeth struggled to her feet, dizzy and nauseated.
Agnes helped her to the divan.
No, Elizabeth didn't want Dr. Miller to be called. She
wanted the television turned off. She would get hold
of herself; she just needed a little rest. She'd stretch
out on the divan, and after awhile, if she didn't feel
better, they would call Dr. Miller.
Elizabeth was in her late sixties and had always been
remarkably energetic and healthy; yet, the strain of
the last several days had been constant and, finally,
unbearable. It was as if her whole life were being
undermined; as if she were being catapulted back into
her youth and the joys she had cherished and
nourished were about to be cruelly destroyed.
She turned to stone on the sofa, absolutely immobile;
so much so that Agnes could scarcely see her
breathing.
She breathed, or scarcely breathed, in Baghdad. She
stood immobile, frozen, sculptured by the roadway,
moveless as death, waiting for the bus from Abu
Graib. Along the road before her, transfixed, wooden
as toys, stretched a convoy of tanks and soldiercrammed
trucks. No one, nothing stirred. The wind
was whisperless, the desert without dust. No veil, black
robe, or palm leaf fluttered. No carter, camel, boot, or
pebble moved. All currents in the Tigris ceased; the
sun was captured in its course, all time suspended.
White flocks of storks above the North Gate Mosque
were stilled in flight like painted ghosts upon the
dome of heaven. The universe was carved in wax and
stone, a single monument, motionless, fervorless,
soundless, sealed in a timeless syncope. All movement
was arrested and waited as in agony for some
momentous signal to begin.
She knew if she should raise her hand the dreadful
armistice with time would cease; the bus would come
from Abu Graib, the convoy move, and every grain of
sand be witness to untold calamity.
She would not move! She would not let one bird song
rise up from the ground, the winds to breathe, the
Tigris to start flowing. She would prevent the advent
of disaster by standing by the roadway fixed forever!
She would not turn back toward her house to wave
goodbye or ever board the bus again to cross the city
to Waziria.
A tear coursed down her cheek and set the sun and
moon in motion.
A whirlwind swallowed up the moments of stilled
time! A great collision rocked the Martyrs Bridge and
earthquaked through the world's foundations. The
severed heads of screaming storks rained blood into
the trembling river.
She ran in terror through the streets, rending her
garments, crawling, raving, looking wildly for herself
among the ruins; rushing from black-robed woman to
black-robed woman beseeching everyone to give her
back her child.
"Allah be praised, Allah be praised,” echoed hollowly
from headborne load to headborne load, from molten
skies, from hidden passageways, from every stone,
from widening fissures in the pavement.
She rushed down avenues of pain, frenzied, tormented,
undone by the cruel ways of Allah, shouting,
imploring, "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"
The crater that devoured her was a whirling funnel —
a vast, deep hourglass filling swiftly, inexorably with
sand. Her body floated, swirled, and eddied among
dismembered dolls, demented birds, and shards of
fallen monuments.
Suddenly, the buoyant sands released her and she fell
— headlong — through a narrow crevasse into the
nether spaces of the universe. Through the dens of
Nightmare and her Ninefold, age after age, eon after
eon, she fell the length of time into the smoke-filled,
blackened smithy of primeval pain — stretched out
upon an ancient anvil, wrapped in chains.
Agnes saw her stir and was relieved to see some
movement; but Elizabeth was lying, in solitary vigil,
upon a block of concrete beneath the broken girders
of the Martyrs Bridge. The clamour and terror of
armour and sirens had ceased; the feet of the living
had drifted away through the twilight to vague
destinations. Circled in sackcloth, a stoic moon had
climbed the sky, whitening the great shattered bones
of the bridge, broken and strewn in the river.
Elizabeth heard the waters washing about the
desecrated fragments of the fallen bridge. The waters
were crimson. The bodies of the slain floated and
swirled in the debris of the bridge. No faces were
familiar. In the moonlight and crimson no features
were distinguishable, none different. All were brown
leaves come secretly forth to lie in the Tigris at
evening.
Elizabeth knew that the thin green-covered class book,
in which she had written their names, floated
somewhere among them; but it had been carried by
merciless currents beyond the reach of her vision.
Other Poems Included in "The Baskets of Baghdad"
Once in Louisiana
IRAQ
Where Once My Father Walked
Babylon
The Baskets of Baghdad
Man and Stones
The Carter
Shuhada Square Twin Reality
Woman and Child
Day’s Shadow
The Shovelers
Ahl as-Sarifa
Moslem in the Fields
TrinityCircling Birds
The Golden Mosque
The Long Miles
Hospitality
Impression of Evening
Lovers’ Ghosts
Woman of the Basrah Streets
No Tales of Arcady
Alms
A Wall in Hilla
Still Does He Sing
Day of Dust
Latent Images
By Babylon’s Shores
Tooth Pulling
Coppersmith
Black Rocks of Jordan
Bedouin Love Song
Flight Into Egypt
And There Were Shepherds
The Carpenter’s Son
Sleeping Child
Mother and Children
Dome of the Rock
Harvest
Summer’s End
Sorrow
Quiltmaker
Hattaba*
The Winds of Winter
Pilgrims
The Coves of Memory
Last Flight to Eden
Retrospect
Night’s Shadow
Departure
The Lost List
Voices
Intaglio
Kindergarten to Iraq
The Circle
Sarmad the Jew
Puerto Iguazu Madonna
IRAQ
Where Once My Father Walked
Babylon
The Baskets of Baghdad
Man and Stones
The Carter
Shuhada Square Twin Reality
Woman and Child
Day’s Shadow
The Shovelers
Ahl as-Sarifa
Moslem in the Fields
TrinityCircling Birds
The Golden Mosque
The Long Miles
Hospitality
Impression of Evening
Lovers’ Ghosts
Woman of the Basrah Streets
No Tales of Arcady
Alms
A Wall in Hilla
Still Does He Sing
Day of Dust
Latent Images
By Babylon’s Shores
Tooth Pulling
Coppersmith
Black Rocks of Jordan
Bedouin Love Song
Flight Into Egypt
And There Were Shepherds
The Carpenter’s Son
Sleeping Child
Mother and Children
Dome of the Rock
Harvest
Summer’s End
Sorrow
Quiltmaker
Hattaba*
The Winds of Winter
Pilgrims
The Coves of Memory
Last Flight to Eden
Retrospect
Night’s Shadow
Departure
The Lost List
Voices
Intaglio
Kindergarten to Iraq
The Circle
Sarmad the Jew
Puerto Iguazu Madonna
Purchasing "The Baskets of Baghdad" in Print
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List of Stanley Freiberg's Works
Plays
Jahanara: Daughter of the Taj Mahal (1999)
Sverre, King of Norway (1999)
Blake and Beethoven in the Tempest (1997)
Mad Blake at Felpham (1987)
Bush, Blake & Job in the Garden of Eden (2005)
Poetry
The Baskets of Baghdad - reprinted (with additions) (2006)
The Dignity of Dust: Poems from the Four Directions (1997)
The Hidden City: A Poem of Peru (1988)
The Caplin-Crowded Seas: Poems of Newfoundland (1975)
Plumes of the Serpent: Poems of Mexico (1973)
The Baskets of Baghdad: Poems of the Middle East (1967)
Short Stories
Nightmare Tales: Ten Inter-related Stories of Kings County, Nova Scotia (1980)
On Gravel Roads: Eight Inter-related Stories of rural Ontario (2004)
Historical Dramas
Black Madonna of the Deluge (2000)
The Two False Dmitris: Russia in the 'Time of Trouble'
Anaho of the Southstars: a Novel of Nevada (2003)
On Gravel Roads: Tales of Early Ontario
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Biography
Poet, playwright, and fiction writer, Stanley K. Freiberg is a Blake scholar and a specialist in the English Romantic period. He received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in 1957.
Retired from the University of Calgary department of English in 1979, he has taught at universities in the United States, Canada and Baghdad, Iraq.
His published works are recorded in Who's Who in International Poetry (Cambridge, England) and Who's Who in Canadian Literature (Toronto). His critical opinions and personal comments on art are cited in Contemporary Authors (Detroit).
Retired from the University of Calgary department of English in 1979, he has taught at universities in the United States, Canada and Baghdad, Iraq.
His published works are recorded in Who's Who in International Poetry (Cambridge, England) and Who's Who in Canadian Literature (Toronto). His critical opinions and personal comments on art are cited in Contemporary Authors (Detroit).
Current entry in Who's Who of Authors and Writers & International Who's Who In Poetry:
FREIBERG, Stanley Kenneth, BA, MA, PhD; fmr teacher, poet and writer; b. 26 Aug. 1923, Wisconsin, USA; m. Marjorie Ellen Speckhard 1947; one s. one d.; ed University of Wisconsin; Chair, English Dept, Cottey College, Nevada, MO 1954-58; Chair., Board of Foreign Language Studies, Univ. of Baghdad 1964-65; Canada Council Award 1978. Publications: The Baskets of Baghdad: Poems of the Middle East 1967, Plumes of the Serpent: Poems of Mexico 1973, The Caplin-Crowded Seas: Poems of Newfoundland 1975, Nightmare Tales: Ten Stories of Nova Scotia 1980, Mad Blake at Felpham (play) 1987, The Hidden City: A Poem of Peru 1988, Blake and Beethoven in the Tempest (play) 1997, The Dignity of Dust: Poems from the Four Directions 1997, Sverre, King of Norway: Drama of 12th Century Norway 1999, Jahanara, Daughter of the Taj Mahal: Drama of the Mogul Empire 1631-1681 1999, Black Madonna of the Deluge: Drama of 17th Century Poland 2000, Anaho of the Southstars: Novella of Pyramid Lake, Nevada 2003, On Gravel Roads: Tales of Early Ontario 2004; Bush, Blake and Job in the Garden of Eden (play) 2005:contrib. to Redlands Review, Christian Century, Dalhousie Review, Queen's Quarterly, Ariel, Parnassus of World Poets 1994. Address: 202-268 Superior Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 1T3, Canada
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