Like Perfume, We Will Wear You

For the Yazidi Genocide

_{Translated by Choman Hardi}

Published in Volume 11 of Consequence Magazine

_{painting: Nabaz Baban}

It was the marathon of flight-
Fire fled, crackling;
water fled, concerned for its honor;
wind fled, fearing for its life;
sparrow fled with four wings;
duck, stork, swan, goats,
sheep, rabbits, chicken, chicks-
they all fled ardently.
Horse fled galloping.
What, rain, butterfly,
fish, whale, and snakefish fled.
We all ... fled.

We were crying and fleeing
at the same time.
We were falling and fleeing,
burning and fleeing,
dying and fleeing at the same time.
In desperation, we banged our heads
on boulders,
threw our children down cliffs.
Even stone beat its chest and fled,
forest pouring mud on its head, fled,
lion roared and fled.

If you give us our girls back
we will marry them off to doves.
This time we will hide them
within the pages of a poetry book.
We will leave them to dry by the hearth.
We will take them with us
wherever we go.
We will return to them their dolls,
their black and white games.
We will not smash their mirrors.
We will not break their necklaces.
We will frame them in dew!

If you give us our girls back
we will take them to a far away
high minaret during wartime,
leave them by a stork.
We will leave them with
a wise and caring turtle till the war ends.
We will put them through schooling
with mourning doves.

If you give our children back
we will paint their bodies with ornament and pattern
so, they won't be recognized.
We will wear them like mournful perfume
so that they won't be stolen.
We will slide them onto a string
with coral and onyx
so that no one will find them.
We will hide them among the saplings,
in the petals on flowers on carpets.
We will carry them inside a daisy's dream,
under a butterfly's pillow,
inside a chest, on the back side of paintings
so that no one will kidnap them.

This time if you give us back our girls and children
We will swaddle them with snow.
Late at night, carrying a lantern
we will take them to the house of stories.
We will dream them by moonlight
like white dreams.
We will relay them like memories.
Like in childhood we will give them
to the river in small boats.