Qais Azimy: Speaking the Names of The Dead

Käthe Kollwitz, "Woman with Dead Child" (1903)

Finally this morning, at Common Dreams, Qais Azimy points out that in the days following the news that American soldier Robert Bales massacred sixteen Afghan civilians in Kandahar, the media have been focusing on questions of the identity of the soldier, his motives, whether he acted alone, etc.  

But sixteen innocent human beings, men, women, and children, lost their lives.  And each had a name.  Azimy thinks it's important that we hear those names, and so he publishes them:

Mohamed Dawood son of Abdullah

Khudaydad son of Mohamed Juma

Nazar Mohamed

Payendo

Robeena

Shatarina daughter of Sultan Mohamed

Zahra daughter of Abdul Hamid

Nazia daughter of Dost Mohamed

Masooma daughter of Mohamed Wazir

Farida daughter of Mohamed Wazir

Palwasha daughter of Mohamed Wazir

Nabia daughter of Mohamed Wazir

Esmatullah daughter of Mohamed Wazir

Faizullah son of Mohamed Wazir

Essa Mohamed son of Mohamed Hussain

Akhtar Mohamed son of Murrad Ali

As I read these names during Lent and remember my complicity in the actions that ended these human lives (since my tax dollars fund those actions), I am reminded of the following powerful lines in poet Cyrus Cassells's poem "Down from the Houses of Magic," in Soul Make a Path Through Shouting (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 1994):

O grant us strength to fashion a table / Where each of us has a name –

That is the unfinished task of the human impulse to build a more peaceful and equitable society--and it is because I think this impulse must always lie at the very heart of Christian eucharistic celebrations that I do not understand the counter impulse to shove anyone away from the table.  From either the eucharistic table or the table of life itself . . . . 

Azimy's article originally appeared in Al-Jazeera English.