"Karbala on Their Lips"

IRAN 1979 (The Necessary)*

The ‘human wave
attacks’

represented

the most
disturbing

and gruesome
parade

of mass self-
sacrifice

in

living

memory comparable

only to
battles

at Flanders during

the First World War
in which

tens of thousands

of men were hounded

from
their trenches

into

the firing range of the newly

developed machine guns in

the seventy
years since

no officers

or army leaders had been
willing to pay

such an
inconceivable
price

for such tiny territorial
gains

the most striking
thing about

the Iranian
‘human
wave attacks’

however
was the degree

of readiness to die
it caused

Iraqi machine

gunners to flee

not only because
they ran out
of

ammunition

but also because they were driven

almost mad because

they could no longer bear

to shoot children
the same

age as their own

until the 1979
revolution

these children

grew up just
like
children

anywhere
else poor

perhaps not
entirely happy but

all the same

with a profound
sense that it was better

to be alive
then

dead now

they
were

rushing to

their deaths as if
the world

had been

turned upside

down

and it was always
the same
word Karbala

Karbala

on their lips

Karbala

on their flags.


*all words from Christopher Reuter's *My Life is a Weapon* (2004)