Brian Turner: It begins as the Highway of Death. It begins with an untold number of ghosts searching the road at night for the way home, to Najaf, Kirkuk, Mosul, and Kanni al Saad. It begins here with a shuffling of feet on the long road north. This is the spice road of old, the caravan trail of camel dust and heat, where Egyptian limes and sultani lemons swayed in crates strapped down by leather, where merchants traded privet flowers and musk, aloes, honeycombs, and silk brought from the Orient. And the convoy pushes on, past Marsh Arabs and the Euphrates wheel, past wild camels and waving children who marvel at the painted guns, past the ruins of Babylon and Sumer, through the land of Gilgamesh where the minarets sound the muezzin’s prayer, resonant and deep. Cranes roost atop the power lines in huge bowl-shaped nests of sticks and twigs, and when a sergeant shoots one from the highway it pauses, as if amazed that death has found it here, at 7:00 A.M. on such a beautiful morning, before pitching over the side and falling in a slow unraveling of feathers and wings.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 23:54:29 +0000
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