The World's Most Lethal Fighting Force
If you’re like me, you’ve been following the US election even though you’d rather look away. As a Canadian, I have no vote, and yet, I care more than I’ve ever cared before. It’s hard not to care when American policy affects so much of what happens not just within its own borders, but across the world.
My first thought continues to be Palestine. The killing of Palestinians now not only in Gaza, but in the West Bank. The destruction of whatever little civil infrastructure still exists. The annexing of more and more and more land. This is the first thing on my mind as I watch a speech, a rally, a debate. And last week’s presidential debate was no exception.
Last week, after the presidential debate, I furiously wrote this out on my phone when I found myself unable to sleep.
The world’s most lethal fighting force
When you promise
”the world’s most lethal fighting force”
what I hear
is
Craters the length of football fields
pregnant with tents
filled with families
who fled
after the school was bombed
after the friend’s house was bombed
after their uncle’s house was bombed
after their house was bombed
What I see
is
A girl who wakes up to the chaos
in the burnt husk of another hospital
shrapnel covering her little face
A girl who asks her doctor
in a panic
if this is the heaven her mother promised
She is concerned
because it’s noisy
and it’s scary
and it still smells like death
(the stench is unbearable, you see, and we can’t smell it through our screens,
but it is blood and rotting flesh, and raw sewage
mixed together with the sharp sting of still-hot metal.)
and the dust? The dust is everywhere
it cakes her face
it lines the beds and the windowsills
it is the remains of every building no longer standing.
Her mother said that if the bombs come
the next time she woke up, she’d be in heaven
and her mother has never lied before, but this?
this does not seem like heaven
What I see
is
A father of newborn twins
celebrating new life
so rare in these parts
A father who walks the rubble-filled streets
to get his babies’ birth certificates
and walks back to find the apartment
with his wife and babies (those perfect, tiny creatures!
10 fingers! 10 toes!)
Gone
A blackened hole in its place
What I see
is
A man abducted off the streets of Gaza
Returned months later
His eyes
haunted
unable to hide the animal fear of what they’ve endured
When you promise
the world’s most lethal fighting force
I’m not impressed but terrified
But then
you were never trying to impress me
were you?
Every scenario I’ve described above is real.
The craters are the result of a recently bombed tent camp in Khan Younis, Gaza, where Israel dropped 2000 pound bombs on families sleeping in tents in the middle of the night, killing or burying alive whole families in a matter of seconds on the night of September 10th.
The girl in the hospital asked this doctor if she was in heaven in this clip below.
The father of newborn twins’ story can be found here
And finally, this man. This poor man’s face is haunted, and will haunt me to my dying day.
This poem could have been hundreds of pages long. I’ve left out some of the most indelible images, because I cannot bring myself to write extensively about beheaded babies, pregnant women and their husbands, killed and hung by soldiers on the roof of their house, innocent men taken into torture camps called prisons and raped, hungry dogs eating human remains on the streets.
We need more than a ceasefire. We need an arms embargo. We need unfettered access to aid and health workers. We need a massive influx of everything required to rebuild society in both Gaza and the West Bank, and we need the authority figures who led this charge held to account. Anything less is not justice, and not enough.
Thank you for reading Letters from a Muslim Woman. I share the joys and challenges of being a visibly Muslim woman in a sometimes-unfriendly world. A paid subscription is $5 a month and gives you access to my unfinished letters, published every other week, where I share my most tender, unvarnished thoughts on topics like Islamophobia, sincerity and hypocrisy, the visibility in being a visible minority and the pressure to be perfect.
If you’d like access to these thoughts and want to support me, consider upgrading.
If you can’t commit to a monthly subscription, but still want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee below. It helps me more than you realize.
Let’s chat in the comments:
Have you been following the US presidential election?
What are your thoughts on Kamala? Are you conflicted like me?
Are there statements you’ve heard, political or otherwise, that were meant to impress you but instead terrified you? Tell me about them.
I'm sick to my stomach. Thanks for keeping these feelings alive and not letting us go numb. I know it comes at a cost to stay on the front lines of these images and information. I wish I had more to say here, but your words were more of an experience than an exercise in intellect.
Yes, I'm reluctantly following them as necessary. Yes, I was horrified when she said that. Your article and especially your magnificent poem speak to my feelings exactly. My country is run by madmen.