Semisynthetic illumination faded over the land.
The dunes sighed;
women and children (wide-eyed)
emerged from humble homes,
hands in the air, guns in their backs.

Still on hands and knees, as if in prayer,
Ahmed’s body slumped forward,
his beard and robes leaving tracks in the sand.

Hand-rolled cigarettes glowed over Mona Lisa soldier-sniggers;
village men,
lined up like sheep near the fence
were being stripped of their clothes—
they shivered in the face of death.

Fadwa’s back door creaked open;
two soldiers, high on poppies’ finest,
tiptoed through desert darkness, fingers on triggers.

Billy the Kid wasn’t named ‘Billy the Kid’ for no reason,
“kicks like a mule”,
so Uncle Mohammad had said;

The first soldier was winded,
the second not quite so lucky.

Fadwa picked up the man’s rifle,
popped the winded soldier in the face.

Billy and Fadwa took the brunt of the bullets; the rest fled.