FROM HASHISH TO HAMAS

I

At the turn of the first millennium fear
in the shadow of Syria's mountains stalked
every traveller. Youths in kaffiyehs walked
on the heels of the soldiers, dogged their rear,

and the eyes were the only part you saw,
a combustion of black invading brown.
And you'd say that all life had learned to drown
in those widening pupils, that the core

of these men had long since expired. And yet
incandescent belief remained, a trust
in a world that hashish had shown them must
come to pass. The Old Man had drugged them; set

on Ansariyah Mountain, they awoke
to the sound of the fountains, heads borne up
on the thighs of live houris, with a cup
of the wine they had dreamed about. A cloak

fell upon them of joy: they'd obey
any orders to kill with hope at last
of repeating the dream to cheat the past
and to end this sad life on holiday.

* * *

See the man over there who chews hashish
in the lee of the rock? He hones his sword;
then he falls to his knees to bless the Lord
and forgets the rewards of mere baksheesh.

Now the Kalif's envoy up ahead
in the midst of the troops is riding by
when our Abdul Aziz blocks out the sky:
quick as light the ambassador is dead

and the Abbasid troopers seize the boy.
He is stripped; then, eyes gleaming, he is laid
on his back. With his gaze he dares the blade
as they stretch him beside the dead envoy.

He looks up at the scimitar and smiles;
in the flashing he glimpses paradise.
And his martyrdom's such a trifling price
for Ansariyah wine that reconciles. . .

and the scimitar falls without a thud
through the tender fanatic's throat to pare
off the head with a phut: the curly hair
on the chest is a kaffiyeh of blood.


II

But the second millennium's brought a change,
and although the career of the martyred thug
is as popular now, the holy drug
isn't needed to madden or derange

any more, and our sons' hashish is hate.
They've seen mothers bewailing loss of home
as men pulverised its grey monochrome
with the bulldozers' scorn and potent weight.

Now our Abdul Aziz was nine when war
was declared on his camp, his sister's chest
by a bullet of rubber was compressed
and his father by Nacht-und-Nebel law

was sequestered and Uncle Tefik shot.
But the vision that drives Aziz is steel
that's destroying his home, the dozer's wheel
telescoping his brother's model yacht

and the olives uprooted from the hill
which has fed them and clothed them many years.
These are each of them screams of things, their tears;
they are bellows to loathing, calls to kill.

His companions tell him to join Hamas;
here imams and bomb boys come face to face;
he enjoys the kalashnikov's embrace
and is safe in the Lord's sublime cuirass.

And the days of his martyrdom approach.
He is told he will shortly have to leave
with a gelignite bomb for Tel Aviv
where he'll wait at the stop and board the coach.

Taking leave of him, Mother begins to weep
tears of pride. "God has chosen: you're His."
And his bedridden sister: "Dear Aziz,
while the spirit's undying, life is cheap."

He is now on the coach and has paid his fare,
takes a seat alongside an Israeli girl;
on his shoulder he feels a weight of curl:
he pretends to himself he doesn't care.

There are office girls, teachers, prostitutes
and some noisy school children showing off;
there's a housewife in debt, a man with a cough,
a mechanic, a nurse, yes, and two deaf-mutes,



and they're all of them going to hell but he,
who's assured of heaven when he's dead -
But the girl with the weight of hair on her head,
will she burn in the pit of hell, will she?

It is early and traffic on the roads
isn't heavy. His fingers give a twitch
which opens the electronic switch
and the coach with its passengers explodes.

Now the schoolboys are mute, the cough is cured,
and the debts are all cancelled, weighty hair
dissipated with souls in smoking air
and the flames of the petrol have quite obscured

every peaceful intent along with the sun,
to reveal to the street the coach's bones.
The police block the road with traffic cones
and hate's holocaust mounts towards the One.