Whispers of the River

“He who walks ahead preserves his companion. He who knows the road preserves his companion.” — Epic of Gilgamesh My friends — those who departed…

Into the Bed of Desolation I hide behind the dust — behind the bed of loneliness. Dilapidated upon its shadow, it melts me into the…

There is a sorrow opening the road of repentance, that I may worship, through forgetting, the path of my soul. There is a chaste stone…

This story was told to me in Baghdad in 2003 by the late Iraqi Kurdish politician Fuad Masum, whom I met before his passing years…

Voices After the Occupation Amal Al-Jubouri “We shall leave the Republican Palace — but keep our rifle-barrels open through its windows to guard all that…

Amal Al-Jubouri Between us — all this Euphrates. A flood of mosques descended in the distance, drawing the hymns of virgins — of widows —…

O Master of the White House By Amal Al-Jubouri, 2006 O Master of the White House, Give me back my city without coffins. Give me…

My husband after the occupation I said to my husband— Be like a brother to me Let’s not wet our marriage bed with even one…

He stumbled between his fear and his fire I was slave but his mistress, lady His name, a tattoo of my pain His past, a…

Poetry Before the Occupation Your beckoning eyes guided me to my country bringing Berlin to the streets of Baghdad Before the womb expelled me you…

“He who walks ahead preserves his companion— he who knows the road preserves his companion.” — Epic of Gilgamesh My friends— who departed into the…

Elegy of the Black Earth (A Prophecy from Sumer to the Age of Oil) By Amal Al-Jubouri I — Tablets of Clay In the beginning…