March...

Vivaldi's four Seasons is blasting away as I am typing these lines.
Concerto no.1 "Spring" is now being played.

I usually like to view Spring as Nature ushering us into a new cycle, a new rebirth on the wheel of Life and Death.
Spring has been traditionally associated by various folks as a new year, the 21st of March to be more precise. A day where Nature's colors and brightness erase the dim, tenebrous memories of the grey winter sky...

In the Middle East this date is celebrated by Persians and Kurds amongst others as Nawrooz (the new year). This date is also Mother's day in this part of the world.

I find it more than coincidental that Mother's day, i.e the one who gives birth is also celebrated on that same date which corresponds to the Spring Equinox. Nature in fact gives birth to all living things in Spring.

Because this day is laden with symbols, my mind wanders automatically to Nature's mysterious and orderly ways.
Everything buds and burgeons in Spring. From the tiniest nascent blade of grass, to some wild flower caught in the cracks of a pavement, to Jasmin and Orange blossom trees... Even palm trees grow small offshoots of bright fresh green leaves.
Here is "Mother" Nature conceiving, gestating, and preparing herself for her final delivery in Summer or early Autumn.

End of march, the Spring Equinox, is also the month where Nature's lands were forcefully and violently invaded.
First they penetrated Her with tons and tons of bombs before Her soil was marched on by foreign boots, planting on their way seeds of destruction and death. Impregnating Her earth, water and air with millions of chemical and radioactive germs and particles, lingering in her womb like some tenacious spermatozoa, fertilizing Her by sheer brutality and force...

And since that day, 4 years ago, the day of conception, Nature has been delivering out nothing but cadavers.
In fact she has been constantly pregnant with a belly full of corpses. And if per chance She does go through protracted labor pains, she instantly drops deformed, wounded and injured faces or some lone limb and pieces of desiccated flesh, scattering them generously all over this land.

And since it is also Mother's day here, naturally my thoughts go to the thousands of Mothers in this putrefied land...

The Mother who lost her child, the Mother who lost her brother, sister, father, mate, her own Mother...
The childless Mother who wants to become a mother but fears conceiving lest these foreign boots kick her in her womb.
The Mother who weeps, the Mother who grieves, the Mother permanently dressed in black, the Mother who soaks her pillow during sleepless nights with silent tears...
The Mother who is arrested and imprisoned. The Mother who is raped and made pregnant against her will. The Mother who is tortured. The Mother who is executed...
And the Mother who has no access to medical care or food. The Mother living on the dirty pavements of Cairo, Damascus or Amman selling anything to feed her kids...
The Mother who is insulted, spat on and humiliated at checkpoints and borders...
The Mother in permanent exile, exiled in her own house and in her own land, afraid of walking the streets...

And naturally again, my thoughts take a turn and go the Motherless child. Thousands of them, scattered like tiny pearls from a broken necklace...

And that cursed month of March, the Spring, the New Year for some...Another true Iraqi has been assassinated. His lawyer Bushra al Khalil said that she sent letters to the U.N secretary general and even to Bush, arguing that Taha Yassin Ramadan was a prisoner of war and that he was under the custody and responsibility of the Americans... Her letters went unanswered.

Furthermore, the Americans would not allow her to attend the Trial since there were "very serious death threats" against her if she lands in Baghdad, so they declared.
Saddam Hussein was executed on New Year's eve and Taha Yassin Ramadan was executed on another New Year's eve...
A symbol for the symbiosis of shared interests...in the Triangle of Hatred America/Iran/The Kurds (read Israel).

Yes they invaded in March, right before Mother's day and the New Year of the Spring Equinox...
Marching in, spitting, cursing, kicking, destroying and massacring everything and everyone on their way...turning the green spring pastures into a killing field irrigated with red blood...

Vivaldi is still blasting away. Concerto no.4 "Winter" is now playing...
Winter is traditionally associated with Endings. Where everything dies preparing itself for rebirth in Spring...
For four years we seem to be stuck in the winter of our lives. We seem to be stuck with Death...

And since Vivaldi wrote sonnets to go with his Four Seasons I will quote for you his winter piece:
"We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising,

hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home despite the locked and bolted doors..."

I just noticed tiny droplets of rain gently knocking on my window."Mother" Nature is crying yet once more...And in Iraq her tears are made of blood.

Painting: Iraqi artist, Ali Talib, "Mesopotamia crying"