Coincidence

Totally oblivious to the profuse sweating which had soaked much of her dress, Mariam could nevertheless feel the streams of tears running down her face. The streams flowed downwards on either side of her nose and ended somewhere near the corners of her mouth, from where the tears dripped onto the hot, parched ground. Sobbing mutely, she continued to look at Zarrar.

    The corpse of her ten-year-old son lay in front of her, supine and spread-eagled. The bullet had struck him on his forehead, just above the left eye, where there was now a gaping hole. Almost all of his face was covered with blood from the wound. Mariam’s eyes had already adjusted to the gruesome sight, and her only consolation was that Zarrar had died an instantaneous, painless death. She gazed up at the heavens and simply thought, ‘Why, Allah?’

    Men came rushing from all directions, lifting up Zarrar’s body and checking it for signs of life. Their shouts triggered the cries of Lubna, Mariam’s only other child, who was only six months old. The baby girl was resting on her mother’s arm, crying out in apparent discomfort due to the noise and the heat.

    That night, after Zarrar’s burial had been completed, Mariam lay in bed, waiting for the sleep she knew would never come. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw her son’s bloody corpse, and cried out in anguish. And every time her family members rushed into her room, to find her sobbing and wailing in agony.

    For the first time in her thirty-year-long life, Mariam considered suicide.

   



    One kilometer away from Mariam’s house, inside the Green Zone of Baghdad, US Army Lieutenant Patrick Brown exited his commander’s office. In the hour-long session in the office, he had been quizzed about an incident in which a bullet fired by him had killed a ten-year-old Iraqi boy. He had convinced his commander that it was purely an accident and that the bullet was intended for Iraqi insurgents whom he was fighting. It was impossible, Brown had asserted, for a soldier to have a high regard for life during a battle.

    Ahead of him, Brown saw a procession of men in suits and ties, heading towards their respective offices. Many of them were prominent Iraqi officials he recognized. Even the civilian officials had a war to fight. Everyday they made their way to the Green Zone, running the risk of being killed or abducted.  It was a daily battle against, for the most part, fear.

    Brown was off-duty at the moment, so he pulled out his brand-new iPod and put the earphone in place. He scrolled through the songs until he found one of his favorite tracks, “We Believe” by Good Charlotte, and played it. The words of the song floated into his ears with surprising clarity:



“There’s a woman crying out tonight

Her world has changed

She asks God why

Her only son has died

And now her daughter cries

She can’t sleep at night



Downtown, another day for all the suits and ties

Another war to fight

There’s no regard for life

How do they sleep at night?

How can we make things right?

Just wanna make this right ….”