Darfur

You men on the ground
in a circle —
utterly black,
wearing white robes
and turbans and kufis —
how long, only Allah knows,
since you have seen home,
since you have eaten,
since your prayers have been heard,
since the Janjaweed
killed your many sons
and worse —

What pristine agony
amid such squalor —
see how the dead
still seem to breathe
when the ceaseless yellow wind
rustles their shrouds —

You men on the ground
in a circle —
utterly black,
white-whiskered,
what holy word
resides on your lips —
what invocation
waits for priceless breath
to set it drifting into
the dusty cosmos of Sudan —

This battered tent city
remains your turning circle
of wind and sand —

What invocation
does the wind carry this evening
beneath elusive stars —
how long since you looked at them,
ancient spinning circles
from time’s austere genesis
in myths —

You men on the ground
in a circle —
your skins, your fortunes
utterly black —
a vague breeze of myrrh
passes among you,
as if to banish
the world’s sins from your midst—

How will you escape this place,
these compelling winds,
the cool and merciless gaze
of these primordial lights
in an unrecognizable sky —

The hour to make your exiled peace
has come and will soon depart —

Kneeling beneath heaven,
hands raised, you glimpse
the outskirts of
a city in another province
and hear its songs,
which you sing quietly,
first alone, then together —

This astonishment you feel
may last forever —
rest assured —
longer, in any event,
than this rude and
sublime hunger.

In the Suuqa Karmal

In Minneapolis, Somali Sufis
gather around
noon cafe tables
that seem strangely small
because of their robes
and inhale the winter air
in the Suuqa Karmal.

The dark restaurant
at Cedar and Riverside
looks out on the street across
from the high-rise project where
an unseen mosque
lets out a hundred people
every day after midday prayers.

They mingle in the street
with no mind to the traffic.
Men, whose skin reflects
all the dark intensity of Africa,
all the abiding tides of the sea,
sit and caress ivory and amber beads,
and drink thimbles of dark,
sordid-looking coffee
that wafts half the distance
down the block, even
when the air is frozen,
like now.

Their eyes flicker as they drink,
as the muezzin saunters in,
his green kufi at an odd,
but purposeful inclination.

Just down the street, at a
bus stop, one of their brethren,
one of the oldest of these exiles
from Mogadishu,
was beaten the better part
of the way to death
a month after Sept. 11.
He died without waking in
the Hennepin County hospital
a few days later, his death
blamed by the white doctors
on old age, the natural result
of his skull colliding
with the edge of the sidewalk.

The eyes of the Sufis in
the Suuqa Karmal
focus on some middle distance as
they drink their winter coffee,
their enlightened nerves illumined
with some inner invocation
of heat and caffeine.

Anger
is not supposed to be theirs,
these night travelers
on the backroads of
Allah’s compassion,
but their eyes slowly darken
in the light
reflected through the windows
by the snow of this strange place.

Their gazes settle on
the muezzin with his green cap,
as he steps toward their chairs
and says, in English, for everyone:

When peace walks among us, brothers,
we will be perfected by it
as surely as saints and prophets —
May the myrrh of forgiveness
teach us the scent of mercy
even as we are cast into the flames
with our devious sins.

Siege

The sundered families
of Falluja, Allah’s
toppled, burning stronghold,
no humiliation
can touch
that hasn’t been
tried and succeeded
in one small way
or another —

So what now?

In Baghdad, in Abu Ghraib,
humility remains
the captives’ ironic strength.
Nothing
can shatter it — not
rape, not bullets, not
electrical wires
(twisted and knotted)
attached to fingers,
genitals,
shaven heads. Not even
night’s silent terror
can alarm anymore.

Not now.

If this were all it took,
none could survive —
this war would be over
for want of victims.

So what then?

Walking across
the Euphrates River
on Highway 10,
behind a pair of
American Marines,
armed and locked and
loaded for "hajis"
and "flip-flops,"
a shaykh from
the Mohammediya Mosque
whispers to his
astonished companion:

I dreamed of Jesus in
Falluja last night,
and in that single moment,
I stopped the war.

—Robert Rhodes lives in Newton, Kansas, where he is assistant editor of Mennonite Weekly Review.