Each flick of your strong forefinger
unleashes another surge—
BANGBANGBANGBANG!—
and the explosive percussion is mirrored
by the rapid battering of your heart,
the backbeat of a silent jihad.
The air is thick with the echoing
screams of the shoppers as they
scatter between tall, unsteady racks
of clothing, hair dye and toothpaste,
hiding beneath circular tables in cafés,
sliding flat on their traitorous stomachs
to cower under dusty old cars.
The fear in this place is tangible—
You can smell it, taste it, see it all about you—
it causes your blood to sing.
You enter a market with your comrades,
and as you have done in every other store,
you fire your weapon into the air—
BANGBANGBANGBANG!—
sure to clip the quickly dispersing mass of
people shrinking behind a dusty
cigarette display, and you are pleased
by the sight of two men hitting
the ground with a dull thud. Their
blood pools as a warning, a tribute.
Then you announce loudly, confidently
that you are only here for the non-Muslims—
the Americans and the Kenyans—
that everybody else need only be a hostage,
not a martyr for a cause that does not
concern them; children will be spared.
You disband to interrogate the fearful
and to root out the traitors,
to determine who will live and
and who is doomed to perish—
you have become a ruler of this shopping
mall, reduced to its shivering bones.
You can see the cowed lies etched into
the lines of their faithless faces,
and with another flick of your finger,
you send them to face Allah without
even the slightest hint of hesitation.
In a far corner of the market sits a
meat counter, where locals buy their
****** flesh, both clean and unclean,
You sneak behind and discover
a woman dressed in black,
her milky face a thin veil of calm,
hands clasping those of her two young
children, a small boy and a willowy girl.
The boy’s green shirt professes
his love for New York City.
All three stare at you in petrified silence,
and for a few moments, you just gaze
straight into the woman’s wide eyes.
“You said children would not be
harmed?” the mother asks softly,
each word flowing sharply through her
accent which cannot be American,
and she stands suddenly. This action
is quite startling, you remember later—
you are already on edge, your
finger still on the trigger, and
somehow a bullet lands in her thigh.
The mother is screaming, pulling her
daughter close as the blood pours forth,
an accidental fountain, but her fingers
cannot reach the boy, who is standing,
walking over to you, so close you could
tear him to shreds, his body would
be Swiss cheese—unidentifiable.
“You are a bad man,” the boy says,
narrowing his tiny green eyes into
excruciating slivers and pointing at you,
“let us go.”
Her screams ring in your ears,
a cacophony of terror,
and your heartbeat slows to a clop
as the boy’s finger remains pointed at
your heaving chest, an honest accusation.
“Come!” you screech, waving
your rifle in the air like a toy.
At the front of the market, the mother
can barely walk, so she loads her children
into a cold, shining metal trolley.
You see an array of candies, and grab
two chocolate bars, handing one to each.
“Please forgive me,” you hear yourself
saying, “we are not monsters.”
The girl is crying, clutching her candy,
but the boy just stares through you.
“You must convert to Islam,”
you tell the desperate mother, who is
loading an injured boy into the cart.
“We are not monsters. We are not monsters.”
She does not speak, she only pushes the
trolley, limping slowly.
“You must convert to Islam. You must convert.”
You help the woman maneuver the
cart through the bodies strewn across
the pale tiles of the shopping mall,
and with every repetition of gunfire—
BANGBANGBANGBANG!—
you reassure yourself, and the woman,
“We are not monsters. Please forgive me.”
She stops again to pick up a different child,
though this one is screaming in French
for her mother and must be forced.
“You must convert to Islam.
Please forgive me.”
As you reach tall, glass double doors,
you pause, knowing you must stay behind.
The brilliance of the sun blots their
figures out of your vision, so you simply yell,
“Please forgive me!”
