Your Saddam

A man emerges from a hole in the ground wild-eyed, shaggy,

lost among lenses and muzzles that drive him into the hands of white-coated men whose gloved fingers prise open his jaw, probe the soft flesh inside his mouth,

tilt his chin away from his neck, expose his pitted skin to the light push his swollen tongue aside,

scrape evidence out of him and display it – surely calling up pity and horror in all who see him this way. If you saw him this way you’d surely push through the bellowing soldiers, the ravening journalists to lead him to safety, you’d reach out to touch him,

smooth the rough hair from his face, capture his confused hands and fill them with this warmth that wells up in your chest until it wants to burst, this same hot ache you feel when you see any wounded living thing. What must you do with this human self that ambushes you with its eagerly spilling sympathy, splashing it into the torn hands of a man, of this particular man?

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