‫كتابات أبو الحق‬

‫العشرين من شباط‬
2008

‫دمع بالمليين‬...‫دمع لكل العراق‬

Tears for Iraq …. In
Battalions
Jazz Fusion
Session Therapy

Almost only an Iraqi refugee like my case here in Turkey, is

entitled to know how it feels ,and what feelings a heart may
undergo , sitting there, viewing Ankara from as high as the site
of " Khoje Teppe" mosque.
Like that prominent historical icon of Istanbul ,"Sultan Ahmet
Blue Mosque", the masterpiece of Sinan, greatest architect of
Ottomans , Khoje Teppe mosque too, is another great Ottoman
monument looming over the whole panoramic view of Ankara,
that all-day exhausted capital. The mosque looks as if a silent
hawk watching over the wilderness around it . You may sense it
all , if you just sat there, and allowed for a little contemplation.

Bleeding all the time is the heart of an immigrant, only those

who were deported and made to leave are to know it, and it is
best depicted by Imam Zain Al 'Aabideen * :

" Being as far from home as to Syria or Yemen, is not what

grants you the icon of a "stranger " ,
It is rather the solitude of the grave that makes anyone a true
 " stranger" ,
…………………..
………………….
Be no rude , ever, to someone who is already a stranger
The whole world is already insulting him thru humiliation and
plights "

And yes in deed, the whole life is sure to rebuke any immigrant
through it all , what a humiliation! , and what a plight is all that
inflicted upon Iraq next to your era , you who were a true Imam
for all Muslims , yet, never made to rule the scene by then .
The whole world is rebuking us , me and my fellow brothers and
sisters, with all forms of humiliation that we had never been
accustomed to. I am hailing you right from the depth of my
heart which knows for sure who you are, honestly speaking .

I felt tranquil at heart as I sat there, in front of the mosque ,at

that most favorable spot of mine , compared to whole Ankara's ,
our souls favors some places over others, you know. I guess it is
the tranquility of this place, rather than any attributed
architecture , or the extreme height of minarets almost piercing
the skies above, as if bleeding them to the colors of dusk . Even
the splendor of the spherical chandeliers and the majesty of the
huge bulk of the mosque had nothing to do with it .The
tranquility prevailing there, in the absence of any annoyance
coming from screaming children and "sticky" beggars and foxy
sellers harassing you , is sensed in the form of a heavenly
calmness and a cool breeze that welcomes your face there. It is
all there, at that site whose extreme altitude would almost make
you mistake it that Iraq is but a few miles to the south ,only a
few kisses distant from you. Deposit a few kisses into your palm
and throw them up into the air, and make believe that it will land
as a dove does, on your relatives' faces , your brother, father,
and mother. You may make believe that they would land onto
faces of friends who were locked home, unable to make it and
leave , same as that brother of " Quraish Falcon " * , the one
who quit crossing the river and got back, assured by the
promises of the manhunt squad across the river .Eventually, it
was his grotesque end awaiting him there . So was the case with
those friends who remained locked there in a way that just
pierces the heart to a perpetual bleeding .It is as if that Iraqi
poet , Abdul Razzaq Abdul Wahid * is chanting:
" Neither they are ever there to appear
Nor their voices too, for you to hear
Your home, that neighbor, or those friends and folks
And you keep on just departing and departing
With the roads around you, all wailing
As if all this vast world
is no more than a single narrow path, my dear pal"

The same meanings of these lines were chanted by Seals &

Crofts, a Baha'i duo, three decades ago. I approve quoting their
lyrics for the wisdom embedded, haven't I mentioned it earlier
that all rivers meet at one common spot * ?

" I'm going way down south, to Baton Rouge tonight.

Well I'll just close the door and turn off all the lights.
And though the images dance by, of the folks and friends who
lie,
Down home where things are slow and easy goin' " .

I approve resorting to music, as long as it is not a sensuous and

sexplicit one , music and rhythms are there within the atoms of
all creatures .The particles bump and dance with each other in a
Foxtrot rhythm, as I presume , it is only that the scientists had
the title misnamed, those forces of "Vander Wal". The infants
themselves never quit crying and resist resorting to sleep unless
rocked well ,they need a rhythm before they may submit
themselves to sleep, and the Turkish old man here was all
rocking too, an hour ago while reciting Quran . All bulbuls and
mocking birds are but generators of music, long before man first
made his first flute, same as volcanoes had inspired eruptions
and revolutions for mankind too . It is all there, on the wall of
creation, to light the way for humanity.
Have you ever wondered why all those soft-pitched creatures
are always of the peaceful kind ,while those predators, all
roaring and howling , are best known for punching , snapping,
tearing and devouring?
This is the gist of it, how music is relevant to what is occurring
in Iraq.

Closing my eyes ,I used my MP3 phones and listened to Pat

Metheny's album ," Still Life-Talking" , come along and share
this issue with me.
How can any music be this wonderful, spraying its balsam over
your soul all the way, while your heart is soaked in bitter
wounds ?
I know that Pat had composed this album a long time ago, as
early as 1987, but the feelings it leaves within you makes you
think that his chords speak your current Iraqi wound, as if
designed for Iraq, this very time, this very context.
How I wish that there is a way of having this album playing
while we are telling this one ,I wish that each reader does have a
copy of this album, to listen to, along with each of the first three
tracks of it…guitar and bass guitar, sneaking into your heart,
and the tickling drives you to cry ,rather than laugh.
And the murmurs of the players sound as if angels' humming ,
taking your spirit high up above the stratosphere , stripping you
from your human nature ,as if your spirit is taking off to outer
space and looking at earth below you, seeing it smaller and
smaller..
Bass guitar that speaks, while your heart anguish reaching its
peaks , a moaning sound coming out of a wounded deer, I was
privileged with that sound that New Year's Eve ***** , do you
still remember ?
Never have I known of a bass guitar escalating this high, as if
talking in deed, almost leading the rest of instruments ..
All my life, I kept probing for a connection between life and
music ,until this album came my way one and a half year ago,
and I was made to realize the link between pain and music, as it
is in those PPS files, combining both words& images with
music, altogether, I think that I am going to consume it too soon,
for the numerous times I am using it ! It is a tool to make you
reach a Nirvana, high above the level of pain , makes you
bypass it all and helps reminding you that life is but a very brief
march, no matter how long it might appear to you, no matter
how many obstacles seem to place themselves onto your course.

The first track, "Minuano", some reciting prayers and human

murmurings, so much tender , to start the session.. guitar and
sitar as well as murmurs resembling a silent prayer for those
who are in lack of any communication , telling of things that
rate to more than the meaning of our own lives .
Death and lovers' breakup , and that yearning feeling..
The absurdness of life, and how the second term of our lifetimes
lacks what the first term has plenty of , the joy and the bliss of
being joyous for all the good things it has..
Sandy beaches and virgin white shores, never marked by any
human footprints, a solitary trip in a convertible car , amidst
spring atmospheres that are charged with the humidity of rain,
and sunlight penetrating the black clouds thru circular hatches to
drop over the fields below them, as if pillars of celestial light,
and a giant rainbow with the greatest azimuth, standing astride
the horizon from east to west, how great you are, dear Lord of
all creation, and how impotent are all these people ..I have been
living those stances and views some fourteen years ago, and my
memory just can't seem to let go of it, till today.
Too many imaginations that follow each other…..how many
lifetimes did you manage to live, Pat?
How many times did you fall in love, to the marrow of your
heart ,to end up having this big heart of yours?
Or could it be your lost passion for Antonia, that did create all
this beauty within you?
How can you manage to capture the heart and force its beats to
submit to the sinusoidal track that your fingertips play?
How do your guitar tunes rule over the sax blows, and the
raindrops that are created by the keys of the organ and piano?
What is it that the bass guitar is striving to say, right in the final
moments of this track?
And why didn't your fellow marines learn how to refrain from
killing and destroying ? why didn't they learn how to love life
and its livings , the way you do ?

And you move to the second track, " So may it secretly begin ",
and you are almost to forget the magic that the first track
inspired into you. The piano resembles teardrops falling on your
head, this is a different kind of speech, unfamiliar to average
people ,but those who are to focus and listen well are entitled to
understand ..my days would have been much sweeter if I were
to grab this album right when it was released.

The third track , " Last Train Home " is much the same. It is
the one interpreting my anguish ,and Iraq's too. The electronic
percussion suggests accelerating raindrops falling from the sky,
but this time it falls in tons, they transform into tears as they fall
down, to tell of our dilemma that the whole humanity has never
realized so far, it is only for this line of Abdul Razzaq's poem to
suit the tune of the track:

" Tears in millions, all for Baghdad

tears and tears, in battalions
Who is to bring Baghdad any nearer,
Baghdad that's weeping for me
Much the same as I'm doing ?
……………..
……………..
I am shedding tears while my old age helps me none to
How come you cry, you seventy seven aged man?
And you know that the tears you are shedding
Are but ones of injured pride , not those of misery"

May be I'm right when I see it speaking of children whose limbs

have been amputated, so recklessly, as if they were mere statues
made of stone!!
Or speaking of women weeping so helplessly, for the brave
guardian is no more there..
Or may be this music is really weeping because the ghost of the
criminal death marketed by people and made in Iraq , free to
roam the streets ,acting like a drunken villain ,on the loose..

And once again, no justice to prevail , and no right to force its

supremacy, for the whole world has agreed to slay the right and
shed the blood and souls of the people. It is as if I am seeing
Abdul Razzaq crying as he chants:

"You are the noblest blood of it to be shed

If you do not dare, then every child in my country is an orphan
And every matrimony is a divorce
Let each star stall in its range
You and you alone, is a shining star
You and just you, are to fill the universe with fear
And all faces of death seem to hurl onto you
Humvies of hell, and the mad tanks tracks
And your death toll, and those insolent faces
And the fires flaming children corpses
And the kidnappers… and the looters
And the women wailing, and the slaying until…
….both the blades and the throats go shivering
Will all be one day
Any death for any which death on the run"

Guitar tunes having the flavor of a sitar, talking rather than just
playing , but you've got to promote yourself and escalate to its
level prior to just listening , and the murmurs add more to its
inspirations.
The man has a guitar of his own improvisation , named it
"Pikasso", it beats any other Uud ****** .He is a gem of the
western world's, though sadly concealed by imported Rap and
Disco music,all bizarre styles of music that got my fellow
people to despise such class music, and overlook how much of
taming ability is there within its reach, for the untamable !!!.
It is a grief that is customized to your own case, cry for what is
hurting your heart , and I will cry for mine..
Cry and feel no shame to do so , I will cover for you if you
were ever beside me , and won't let any stranger glance your
face, for your grief is mine, and no one in this merry land is to
understand you except for some ripped-heart guy like me.
Cry my brother, be you a Hussein , or an Omar *******, cry
like me, as long as you do not belong to those crooks and
scumbags.
Cry for too many that we have lost, yet no way to confess it , for
it's too late now, and all that crying of the little king of Granada,
never did him any good.
Cry for the human beings, cry for the beasts of burden, for the
stones too..
Cry for mutilated corpses ,with no grave to home them, cry even
for those who had a grave too .

And here are some lines of Rabindranath Tagore , those ones

which Jawahir Lal Nehro described as being "like prayers",
telling of a plight that is much like Iraq's tragedy, although it is a
hundred years old by now, composed by a very sensitive genius,
born in 1861, but the wisdom of his is still echoing so
enchantingly till today . It is the serial crime of Abel & Cain,
however different the cause or justification of the crime is to
be , whether a dispute on a marriage, a burst of rage that has
taken over reason, an oil well flowing with gold, or any other
reason that might appear very appropriate to inspire a kill!!

Don't you see it that we, human beings, have never learnt the
lesson?
That crow did not repeat the burial mimicry , except for that
very first, and final once, it was meant just for demonstration,
for the sake of that first and prime killer to learn the lesson ,
how to cover his victim's body, while the descendants of the
killer did approve the act of crime in stead, and carried on
repeating it, not even abiding by that lesson of the crow. May be
it is because they did not condemn that first crime, that they
even clinged to using the name of the killer , Cain !!
I wonder who was the real crow, that bird, or( The Killer&
Co.) ?
"Listen to the old one speaks
Of all he has lived through
"I have crossed between the poles
And for me there's no mystery
Once a man , like the sea I raged
Once a woman, like the earth I gave
But there is in fact more earth than sea "

Listen to the enlightened man of Bengal, listen to him speaking

of his fellow citizens, as if speaking of Iraqis in stead, listen and
focus on the final lines of his:

" Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom , my father, let my country awake".

• Imam Zain Al 'Aabideen: Ali Bin Alhusain Bin Ali Bin Abi Talib ,
the fourth Imam of Shiites ,and the only male spared after the
massacre of Kerbala .
• (Aka Abdul Rahman Al Dakhil) : Founder of the Andalusian
Ummayad Caliphate after fleeing the Abbasid massacre of his whole
family and clan in Syria .
• Abdul Razzaq Abdul Wahid: One of the most prominent poets
from the times of Saddam's reign, left Iraq after the late 2003 war, to
settle in France, and Syria lately. His poems speak of Iraqi grief and
nostalgic memories, as well as condemning the occupation of Iraq .
• According to one quote of Prophet Mohammad, Muslims are
ordered to seize wisdom , no matter what source be the provider .
• In reference to another editorial of mine, titled ( Happy New Year
Uncle Saeed).
• Uud: A musical instrument that is the Arabian peer of the western
guitar .
• " Hussain & Omar ", a metaphoric duo, suggesting an Iraqi
common frame of identity ( i.e. whether you are a Shiite or a Sunni
Iraqi fellow).