Gods

In the year of ’88

All the gods

Could see

The villagers’ bodies

Spitting as they burned,

But none moved.

Only to light

The cigarettes on their lips

Did they incline their heads

To those fires.

--- Sherko Bekas

translated by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse & Halo Fariq

Translator’s note: On March 16, 1988, as part of Anfal, Saddam Hussein’s military campaign against the Kurds of Iraq, Halabja withstood a chemical-weapons attack. The largest directed against a civilian population in history, it has been recognized as an act of genocide by the Iraqi High Criminal Court