April 9 - An Excerpt
“For years, you could see the metal toe of Saddam’s foot still attached to the base of his former statue, but now you’d never even know anything was there.”
—Jane Arraf, Firdos Square, Baghdad
[From “Iraqi Who Toppled Saddam Hussein Statue 15 Years Ago Regrets His Action,” NPR News, April 9, 2018]
I.
The knights laid claim over the aggressive forest today. Or at least over the part that might give the villagers peace of mind. I was there. I watched as they hacked away at the base of a large cedar—the most persistent among the grove—with their sharpest axes.
The tree groaned in a way that we all felt more than heard—deep rumblings that could have been confused with the sounds of temblors, maybe, or a stampede of wildebeests as described in horrific detail by our neighbors to the south. At the sound of the tree’s keening, the hair on my neck and arms raised like it does during a rare course of dry lightning in midsummer. The earth did shudder, as if the wicked tree were pulling up its roots from deep within the dark peat of the forest in a move to run. But of course that couldn’t happen, I thought, even as I watched the swaying bole and saw the terrible eyes—millions of them—glimmer through the dark seams of the tree’s thick and unforgiving hide of bark.
Eventually, the giant stopped swaying and groaning, and the tiny, glittering eyes, bloody as the underbark of the tree, blinked themselves into blackness, and a stillness, made sharp by the scent of perturbed cedar oil, pervaded the forest.
Once the knights and the woodsmen determined it was safe, they let the townsmen throw a few blows at the girdled tree themselves: first, a brawny man in his sleeveless under- shirt, then a scrawny man who could barely hoist the handle of the axe. It didn’t matter whether their blows were effec- tive; the villagers cheered them both on until the collective of voices grew raw and hoarse.
Then, a team of workhorses, led by the lumberman Brudligh, urged forward. From it, the knights rigged a several- thonged pulley that the woodsmen arranged strategically around key angles along the bole of the ignoble tree. With the sheer force of the equine team—pulling until the horses lathered, eyes rolling wildly behind blinders—the monolith of venom-tipped needles and cones was razed to the ground.
The sound of the tree crashing to the forest floor was deafened by the victorious cries from the villagers. Yet the feat was incomplete. The tree had caught itself on the limbs of the cedars adjacent. It would not fall in one glorious move, as the knights and the prince presiding over this grotesque- rie had originally intended. Instead, there was an uncertain cracking and the sounds of shots, as if from small cannons. The upper parts of the giant collapsed and fell in random, jagged pieces that smudged the air with motes of dried wood sliver, leaf mold, and needles, leaving the men nearest the tree to fits of coughing and sneezing.
The awkward reality of that moment sent the woodsmen muttering in great displeasure, for it was their kinsmen who had suffered most at the hands of the giant, and they wanted its felling, however symbolic, to be—if nothing else—surgical in its precision.
No one stopped the peasants from shinnying up the sides of its once-malevolent trunk after that. They reached with lean, muscular bodies to strip its tenacious limbs, clawing at the heartwood with bare hands, gathering inside the skin of their palms and forearms dozens of tiny blades of wood that left them bleeding. At one point, the villagers laid claim to its jagged top. They dragged it mercilessly, by a wagon’s rope, through the muddy streets of the village. A child—heady with
victory—rode the tree’s head as if it were merely a runaway ass.
Only later did I realize what a crude and lunatic feat the tree felling had been.
“What’s the matter, Mama?” my youngest asked me at suppertime. All of us—me, my husband and our five children— huddled around the hearth, blowing on our porridge bowls to cool our suppers. She had caught me in a frown. I could only shrug. To say more would be far too dangerous for us all.
Read the rest in Crab Creek Review volume 2
Tamara Kaye Sellman is a widely published writer living in Bainbridge Island, WA. Her work has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She works as a sleep health educator, healthcare writer, and MS advocate/columnist when she’s not crafting creative prose.
In 2003, I watched the footage of the Iraqis tearing down Saddam Hussein’s statue. I’d kept a “war diary” to chronicle my thoughts and captured that milestone in detail. Not long after, I explored it as a cautionary fairy tale reflecting dissent at that time. Fifteen years later, I heard the NPR report about the man responsible for the statue’s razing. His hindsight paralleled my story’s moral. I revised it to reflect time’s surreal influence.
In 2003, I watched the footage of the Iraqis tearing down Saddam Hussein’s statue. I’d kept a “war diary” to chronicle my thoughts and captured that milestone in detail. Not long after, I explored it as a cautionary fairy tale reflecting dissent at that time. Fifteen years later, I heard the NPR report about the man responsible for the statue’s razing. His hindsight paralleled my story’s moral. I revised it to reflect time’s surreal influence.