David Powell

Bulldozers moved over the ash. In their claws, the weight of souls. In their claws, a child traces her first word, her auntie claps with delight. In their claws, a young doctor graduates at Al Azhar, dreams of the years ahead. In their claws, three mothers eat pistachio ice creams, midst jokes, laughter, gossip, as the sun sinks into the sea. In their claws, an old man reads a book under the well-tended orange trees, turning each page with care, making notes in the margins. In their claws, are fragments of bones so loved that the universe in all its immeasurable immensity will never recover their loss. (Image by Hadil Alsafadi)

"Politics based entirely on the persecution of fabricated boucs émissaires, of imagined scapegoats, of those most vulnerable in society, always ends one way," said Old Fox, sipping his cocoa, "in violence and cruelty and the degradations of war." "It feels desperate," said the Doctor, pausing to light his pipe, "desperate. As though everyone has forgotten where that false patriotism of flag-waving led us all before. What can one do, Old Fox?" "Flood the country with rationalism, normality, kindness, paint over the slogans, tear down the hateful flags, but move calmly and with thought, with immense care and logic, not passion. Passion leads to fighting, book-burning, riots, deaths, chaos. Exactly what they want."

The Mouse was waiting in a long line for rice. She was crying. She thought it might run out before she reached the front. No-one left even a grain behind from their portions. The sun was relentless and her feet hurt. Dizzying, fevered thoughts flowered and faded like Damask roses from the north. She imagined being far away, under a slow fan in a cafe, ordering pastries and Sahlab, scattered with nuts. She imagined reading a newspaper, ink staining her paws. She imagined the headlines of slow starvation, of death, of genocide. She imagined folding the paper and eating her pastries, sipping her Sahlab, and she wept.

It was a little cooler that afternoon and very overcast, the clouds mackeralling over the pale stubbled fields. In the hedgerows, the sloes and the hawthorn berries gleamed and clouds of little goldfinches, skittery and light as thistledown, called to Wolf as he loped his way along the lanes to the village square. He was going to Fernby and Evans, the Bakers, just before they closed to buy a bundle of spares. Spares were the left over breads and cakes from the day, sold for pennies, sometimes given away. Mrs Evans, who had a soft spot for Wolf, always kept him some midweek on a Wednesday and slipped in a few special dainties, chocolate florentines and Maids of Honour and apple tarts, which could very well have been sold the next morning and weren't spare at all.

Wolf hated the swifts leaving and refused to say goodbye. He stayed in his room until all was silent, and they had gone, flown so far the faint lights of the Finistère coast, of Ouessant and Île-Molène were below them, like old, old stars scattered in the great Atlantic swell.

It was very early in the drowsy water meadows which ran through the village, across the river beyond the busy square. Lot of noisy hoppers here, said Wolf happily, who was particularly buoyant that morning, having had a good sleep and an even better breakfast. That's not the call of the grasshoppers, said Old Fox, that's the high, reeling song of a very sweet little bird, the grasshopper warbler, Locustella naevia. Sounds terribly similar, hence her name. She's not a plagiarist though, Wolf, no, no, no, rather, her music is a highly sophisticated homage to her hay-hopper friends, her harmonical compatriots of the meads. And for a brief moment, emboldened by Old Fox's comforting presence, the warbler made herself known to them, moving like a meadow mouse through the long summer grasses and the cascades of purple vetch.

The little Mouse's back and ears hurt & she couldn't stop shaking. It was difficult to walk, there was something wrong with her foot. The night was scathe-fire, red as hell. Her home, an empty can of Foul Mudammas, was gone. What she saw, what she heard, were ragged swords, fragments so terrible, so wicked, they would not be pieced together in a thousand years. A violent, acrid tempest, untethered screams, shouting, desperate shouting like a sea in storm. One man howling, my beloved, my beloved, my moon, my beloved. There are piles of smouldered fragments. They would not be pieced together in a thousand years. Burnt melted bomb soldered tents, fragments, fragments, fragments of the loved, a rose-pink blanket, soot charring deep in soft knitted folds; coloured pencils, burnt to charcoal, a football sticker book, child-lorn, a sooted rabbit, child-lorn, child-lorn. Where do I go now, whispered the little Mouse, where do I go now. There is no safe home for me, there is no safe home for me, there is no safe home for me.