Ta Da

Revolution - The Beatles

Hello, My Name is Hamza al-Khateeb

Hamza al-Khateeb

I was wasting time in Facebook yesterday when I stumbled upon a group entitled, “We Are All Hamza Alkhateeb.” Since I had never heard of this person, I checked it out and learned that 1) Hamza was a 13-year-old boy who was tortured and murdered by the Syrian regime in Daraa in the spring of 2011, 2) his name has become a rallying cry for opponents of the Syrian government, and 3) the group’s photo album contains a number of graphic and disturbing images depicting the suffering of civilians – especially children – caught up in the Syrian uprising that began on my birthday, March 15, in 2011.

I asked Anita what she knew about this part of the so-called “Cradle of Civilization” and she replied, “Only what I’ve heard on NPR which is that the Syrian government is getting weapons from Russia and fighting rebels and protesters in the streets and slaughtering innocent civilians. It’s been going on for a long time.”

I’ve got to listen to NPR more often because all I knew was that civil war had broken out. I knew nothing about the Houla massacre during which 108 people were killed, including 34 women and 49 children. I wasn’t aware that people were being “summarily executed” or that the United Nations Human Rights Council formally condemned the Syrian government or that the Free Syrian Army, the main opposition group, is comprised of defectors from the regular Syrian Army who want to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and end five decades of Ba’ath Party rule.

I also didn’t know that the state of human rights in Syria has long been the subject of harsh criticism from internal and external sources, or that President Obama signed an executive order in May of 2011 imposing sanctions on the al-Assad government in the hope that it would “end its use of violence against its people and begin transitioning to a democratic system that protects the rights of the Syrian people."

If the grim statistics provided by the Facebook group administrators are correct, 4,349 children, 3,567 women and 7,014 rebel soldiers have been “martyred” since March of 2011. An estimated one million people have been arrested, more than 60,000 are missing and over ten million are homeless and displaced.

I'm not going to repost the photos of the mutilated corpses of kids wrapped in burial shrouds, their family members beside themselves in obvious, overpowering grief. I don’t want to be accused of disseminating unsubstantiated propaganda or turning people off with sanctimonious overkill. I just thought I’d share what I’ve recently learned with readers who may think the biggest news is that legless Olympian Oscar Pistorius shot his pretty girlfriend, Kellie Pickler’s going to be on “Dancing with the Stars” or a satirical website named after a vegetable called nine-year-old actress Quvenzhané Wallis a c-word. The parents of at least 4,349 little girls and boys in Syria – including Hamza al-Khateeb – beg to differ.


Click here to read “Children suffer horrific injuries as Syrian forces target civilians,” February 6, 2013.

Up Against the Wall

Anita Baker - Sweet Love (live)

Sunday poetry

At The Padre Hotel In Bakersfield, California

It's Saturday night, and all the heterosexuals
in smart little dresses and sport coats
are streaming into what we didn't know
was the hoppingest spot between Las Vegas and LA.
Janet and I are in jeans and fleece - not a tube of lipstick
or mascara wand between us. Grayheads:
a species easy to identify without a guidebook,
the over-the-hill lesbian couples of the Pacific Northwest.
Janet's carrying our red-and-white cooler with snacks for the road
across the marble tile of the Art Deco lobby
when we turn and see the couple
entering through the tall glass doors, slicing
through the crowd like a whetted blade. The butch
is ordinary enough, a stocky white woman
in tailored shirt and slacks, but the confection -
no, the pièce de résistance - whose hand she holds
is of another genus entirely.
Her burnt-cinnamon skin, her gold gown
spread like icing over a cake.
And her deep décolletage, exposed enough for open-heart surgery.
She's a yacht in a sea of rowboats.
An Italian fountain by Bernini.
She's the Statue of Liberty. The Hubble Telescope
that lets us gaze into the birth of galaxies.
O, may they set that hotel room ablaze, here
in this drab land of agribusiness and oil refineries,
outdoing Pittsburgh as the top polluted city in the nation. May they trash it
like rock stars, rip up the 300-thread-count sheets,
free the feathers from the pillows.
And may that grand femme be consumed
right down to the glitter on her sling-back, four-inch stilettos
and whatever she's glued on her magnificent skin
to keep the plunge of that neckline from careening clear off the curve.

~ Ellen Bass

Happy Birthday, Amelia!

My oldest daughter, Amelia, was born at 10:11 a.m. on this day 22 years ago at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. Because we’re estranged, I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing now. I hope she’s healthy, though, and safe and loved and respected. I hope she has everything she needs and her future is still bright. I hope she knows I’ve never forgotten her and there’s always a place for her at our table and in my life. And I hope she has the happiest of birthdays.