Terminus
Here is a piece of required reading
at the end of our century
the end of a millenium that began with the crusades
The transcript of an interview
between a Red Cross doctor
and a Muslim girl in Bosnia
twelve years old
who described her rape by men
calling themselves soldiers
different men every night one after the other
six seven eight of them
for a week
while she was chained by the neck
to a bed in her former schoolhouse
where she saw her parents and her brothers
have their throats slit and tongues cut out
where her sister-in-law
nineteen years old and nursing her baby
was also raped night after night
until she dared to beg for water
because her milk had run dry
at which point one of the men
tore the child from her arms
and as if he were “cutting an ear of coin”
(the girl’s words)
lopped off the child’s head
with a hunting knife
tossed it into the mother’s lap
and raped the girl again
slapping her face
smearing it with her nephew’s blood
and then shot the mother
who had begun to shriek
with the head wide-eyed in her lap
shoving his gun into her mouth
and firing twice