Even though the window is virtual, the dead are real.
—Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry
1 – The war is over
The war is over. But the bombs are still falling inside my head.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have cleaned the window
overlooking your house with an electronic
newspaper
And the plastic rose that I put on my
brother’s grave would have grown.
The war is over, and the friends who went to the market to buy a fresh death were killed on the way.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have recycled my friends
For I need secondhand friends.
The war is over, and the dead have returned to their families safe and sound, the martyrs have returned to their mothers in one piece, mothers have returned to their houses, houses, streets, mosques, eyes, legs have returned to their owners, fingers have returned to hands, rings to fingers, schools to children, washing lines to balconies, lovers to rooftops, my brother has returned to my mother, and I have returned to Damascus.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have forgotten to remember the war
And remembered to forget it, as the dead forget the general’s features
And the martyrs remember the way home.
The war is over, and all those I knew are dead, or war criminals, or dead war criminals.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have turned off the war like you turn off the television
But we were born into a bitch of a world
And when people are born into a bitch of a world
Time changes into a typewriter
And the dead become poems.
Comedy footnote:
The genius of Dante lies in his description of Limbo; think about it a little, you’ll realize immediately that we’re living in the first circle of hell.
(Cut)
2 – War
I tried to translate the war from a Semitic language to an Indo-European language for you, and you were hit by shrapnel. I tried to come to your aid and we were besieged by news bulletins. The Security Council tried to send us smart weapons, and security men of average intelligence confiscated them, we insulted the Red Cross and the Vatican objected, we ate the flesh of dogs whose owners had been killed and the environmentalists objected, we were saved from drowning and the European Right objected.
How can I describe to you how much this world resembles the beating of skinny hands on the thick walls of gas chambers in detention camps, without giving you PTSD? How can I explain the difference between house slaves and field slaves, without making you confuse Syria with surrealism? How can I say in the same poem my friends were tortured to death and you are more beautiful than New York, without Lorca laughing in his grave, or poetry being separated from reality?
Tragedy footnote:
The problem with this world is not that a quarter of its inhabitants go to psychiatric clinics, the problem is that the rest don’t go.
(Cut)
3 – Chess
When the wind passed by, it couldn’t find the tree and the axe was looking at me, while I was lost in translation, calm as a ceasefire, stuck in a blue planet in a remote suburb of the Milky Way. I saw a gazelle devouring a wolf, blood dripping from her teeth, I saw barren women suckling fetuses that were born dead, I saw electronic flies emerging from Twitter and hovering over my friends’ corpses, I saw a country traveling in a fishing boat, and a man eating his dead brother’s flesh, not metaphorically as in the Qur’an, but eating the flesh of his brother killed in a bombing raid, so as not to starve to death. The wind passed and didn’t find the tree, or the city, or the country. The dogs didn’t howl, the caravan didn’t move on. My wife the widow looks at me, and the war is clean like a game of chess. Barrels of oil rise in price and barrel bombs of TNT fall on cities, planes lick school textbooks and suck children’s fingers, while I am silent like a European citizen who enjoys the privileges of the first world and asks with the innocence of a domesticated wolf which is harsher, the Swedish winter or the Arab spring?
Absurd footnote:
The New York Times says milk is white, Paul Celan says milk is black, my mother says there is no milk!
(Cut)
4 – A metaphor from a virtual world
Dante was right. This comedy that we are living is divine, or to be fair, let’s say that it’s at least 97 percent divine, otherwise how do you explain the fact that everything around us resembles a metaphor from a virtual world!
Flowers have sex via bees!
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian!
We are happy because the USA hasn’t dropped the atomic bomb on Tokyo!
A dictator’s supporters demonstrate to demand the banning of demonstrations!
I love you!
God sells lands full of milk and honey!
Finland is the happiest country in the world according to the World Happiness Report!
The cross you wear round your neck is no more than a Roman instrument of torture!
Tragicomedy footnote:
Since everybody is going to die in the end, the death rate in Syria and Sweden is the same.
(Cut)
This poem is from Ghayath Almadhoun's book of poetry I Have Brought You a Severed Hand, published in English in 2025 by Action Books in the U.S. and Divided Publishing in the U.K and Belgium. It was translated from Arabic by Catherine Cobham.