Battle of the Rams

The field has ceased to be lush wonder, from the eyes of a bird I watched them go again and again, horns finding the softness behind fur. Here, what seek for death is been praised. Young boys jump into the air to know the weightlessness of joy. Every year they come here to know death, to know the last sound of a dying animal is a plea for the knife. I looked from above, sending back the spirit of dead animals into the bodies of little boys. We were never too young to know the tongues of kites are beginnings to rituals and when these boys begged to be set free from seeing a horn spill blood on grasses, what do they mean? We all must know death to know the sadness of a grave.

Again, another ram is led to the center, a whistle is heard, another ram is allowed to walk through. The sun kept shining, faithful witness to every war, to every broken horn, to every animal whispering for death. Another ram is fallen. Abdul turned to me, the knife in his hand ready to run through the ram's neck is an act of mercy. 

This is the ritual of war I was given. In a train in Boston I tried to hide in a book while an old woman kept saying I write for Africa, as if Africa is a little bowl of water, as if our tongues are not divided by borders. She turned to me to say you must know about conflict zones. Even when invisible, I am asked about the origin of war. I opened my palm to spill a ram's blood on her seat. This is what I know, a ram will look death in the eye and run towards it just like a man walking into the night with the weight of a continent on his back.