Song in Remembrance of Malak Jubeily

Malak Jubeily, aged two, killed in a Israeli airstrike on Ghazieh, lying in the morgue at a hospital in Sidon, Lebanon, 2006 (c) Michael Schmidt 2006

A man laying the bodies of two children killed the previous day in an airstrike on a funeral party squints anxiously at the sky as drones and bombers fly over the same cemetery, Ghazieh, Lebanon, Summer War, 2006 (c) Michael Schmidt 2006

As a post-traumatic stress disorder sufferer, you realise some things stay with you for a long time. I wrote the song below six years after I shot the photographs above.

GRAVESIDE
(2012)

When the spotter drone
first flew overhead
standing there 
in thirty-seven degree heat
I’d died
standing astride 
two children wrapped
in winding sheets inscribed
with hasty Arab prayers 
I knew 
deep in my bones
I’d died
I knew 
deep in my bones
I’d died

In that endless moment
before the bombers came
standing there
sweating down my neck
unstaunched
Looking down
at a grave that was mine
all my days a narrow confine
reduced to cement dust
I knew
I’d never come out
the other side
I knew
I’d never come out
the other side

I knew 
deep in my bones
I’d died
I knew
I’d never come out
the other side
I knew 
deep in my bones
I’d died


[ENDS]