Peace Poem

Ziyad Salem was under immense pressure to write a peace poem. For that reason, he slept poorly and awoke even more poorly to a helicopter flying low over his apartment. In his half-conscious state, he mistook the thundering for a nuclear bomb. The insomnia of recent months had spurred him to rehearse a response to this exact situation and so, as practiced, he leapt out of bed and hugged his body against the nearest doorframe where the ceiling was less likely to collapse. He also remembered to say, There is no God but God, which he always worried he would forget in the moment before death, forfeiting a one-way ticket to paradise. Instead, he was impressed with his own readiness, agility, and presence of mind. For a few minutes he remained rammed against the doorframe, repeating a martyr’s prayer, There is no God but God, with his head bowed and his eyes scrunched. Then his pulse slowed. The blaring in his ears died to a hum. He realised his skin was not melting. The rumbling crescendo passed overhead again so he ran to the window, which did not open and in fact had not opened for years.I’m moving out of this dump once and for all! he vowed, before squinting through the muck on the pane. The helicopter swung back around. Ziyad was enraged. How was a poet meant to write a peace poem without a mindful start to the morning? And without writing a peace poem, how would he deliver a ‘more hopeful’ manuscript to his publisher so that he might finally win enough money to move out of the dump?
    He threw on a sweater without a shirt underneath because he didn’t have the energy to do both and went to the kitchen with the pants he had slept in since they were technically daytime pants. Then he lay a piece of paper on the breakfast bar and stared at it waiting for a peaceful impulse to arrive. The letter ‘Z’ floated across his mind, a low, persistent vibration. A hum that swelled to engulf all senses could be peaceful. He imagined an astronaut calmed by the moon growing large outside the hatch of his spacecraft drifting silently, frictionlessly towards it. A conductor closing her eyes and letting her arms lift as the whole orchestra tuned to one note. But what ‘Z’ word would convey this? Ziyad tried writing the letter to see if others would follow. He said, ‘ZZZZZ’. He said it again. The sound made his head swill. It bored up through his nose into his skull. He stopped saying it. But the zzzzz continued so he touched his mouth and was confused to find his lips closed and tongue immobile. When ignoring the noise failed, he launched off his chair in a huff and circled the kitchen, the bottom of his feet picking up crumbs as he walked, hunched, a hand cupped around his ear. The droning was faint but deep enough that he could feel it chiselling his skull. Thinking it was the helicopter again, he went to the kitchen window, which was even grimier than the one in his bedroom, making it impossible to see outside. In any case, it did not seem to be the same ferocious sound. It was a watchful whir. He scoped the kitchen, pressed his ear to the refrigerator, the microwave, the dusty lightbulb, the vent in the ceiling that led to who knew where since no air had ever come through it, though every now and again it let down a few flies.
    This is no place for a man to contemplate the peace of the world, Ziyad decided. He put on his sandals and went out into the street, where it had apparently rained overnight because he stepped immediately into a puddle. For a moment he considered turning back to dry his feet. Wet is wet, he puffed, and continued walking. The squelch of his shoes confirmed this theory, accompanying him several blocks across the blaring city, which was unseasonably cold and inept at drying. Just as he was starting to feel the unseen buzzer give up, a bulldozer swerved off the street and tried to kill him by crushing him against a wall. He heard the engine roar and the roller crunch the pavement as he flattened his body to the ground, this time forgetting to say, There is no God but God. But it didn’t matter because he survived. And when he gathered the strength to peer up, he found no bulldozer in sight—only a groaning garbage truck disappearing down the road. But why would it have been a bulldozer? Ziyad reasoned, angry at himself for the cold pain shooting down into his knees and fingertips and clamping on his chest. It’s stupid for a man to get so worked up! And now there was no chance of writing the peace poem here either since he was discombobulated.
    He stopped by the side of the road and phoned his publisher. ‘Really, Douglas, I would like to forget this whole peace poem business and call it a day,’ he said.
    Douglas, who was very old and very calm and very much in charge of Ziyad’s publishing contract, replied, ‘Listen, isn’t it true that poets are the luminaries of our time? And isn’t it true that what our time needs is for the capable and willing to imagine the gift of hope?’
    ‘I am beginning to feel that I am neither capable nor willing,’ muttered Ziyad. Then he jumped out of his skin because an ambulance suddenly wailed into view. Pressing a hand over his exposed ear, he slipped into a nearby alleyway where the stench of drain water drowned out the zzzzz.
    Douglas ignored him. ‘So far you’ve got a poem about a man spit roasted over a fire and then devoured by soldiers, another about a woman struggling to give birth in a coffin because there’s no space to open her legs, one about child running late to school because she’s collecting the pieces of her brain from around the house, and roughly five others featuring either the word “carcass” or “drones”.’
    ‘Actually,’ Ziyad piped in, ‘I think I have another poem about drones if you want.’
    ‘Ziyad,’ said Douglas.
    ‘Yes,’ said Ziyad.
    The other man let out a measured breath. ‘We both know that if you finally want to win something, you need a peace poem. Tell me you don’t need the prize money. You wrote beacons when I acquired you. Now it’s like you’re living under fire. Have you ever survived a warzone, Ziyad?’
    ‘Not that I recall.’
    ‘Then I need you to go home, delete your social media apps, stop watching the news, have a nice meal, and write me a happy peace poem.’
    Ziyad thought of his caked windows. He thought of his unflushable toilet and the rust-tinged water that came out of his taps when it got too warm. ‘Easy,’ he said, and hung up.
    Obtaining a nice meal seemed the most straightforward of those instructions to follow. To that end, Ziyad considered going to his mother’s. But at his mother’s the television would be blasting the satellite news to which she had become addicted in the last year since she had caught a glimpse one day of a woman she became convinced was her sister—her sister who was most certainly dead since she had been an avid texter when she was alive and no one had received a Facebook link from her in about eighteen months. As if she could have picked one face out of the broadcast masses anyway. Masses, Ziyad thought, lingering on the word. It had a good rhythm and the sibilance was nice, potentially serene. Yes, masses could be peaceful, like a mass of birds, a mass of worshippers, a mass gathering, masses lining up, masses walking a long way, huddling together, dumped on top of one another, bodies swarmed by flies. Never mind. Ziyad shook the syllables out of his body and decided to eat out instead.
    There was a truck selling kebabs in the park down the road. Parks were peaceful; that was the purpose of their design. Oasis, Ziyad thought. See, it’s working already. He picked up pace, moving so quickly that the hovering buzz almost got left behind. It lagged at a wonderfully increasing distance, and remained faint as he ordered a falafel wrap and took a seat near the other patrons on the grass. There was a mother with her toddler which might have been good inspiration for a poem, but Ziyad didn’t like to look at toddlers those days, not even at the baubled clip in her hair, no matter how delightfully globular the word bauble might have sounded in a line. Beside them was a slim man laying face-down in the grass, the sun warming the brown sliver of his back where his shirt had ridden up. His black hair was brilliant in the afternoon light, especially against the green blades. Dirt, thought Ziyad. Face-down. He watched the man’s motionless torso, held his own breath in anticipation of the other’s, which never came, bringing him to such a momentary panic that he hurried over and gave the man’s foot a light kick. The guy lifted his head from the earth, displeased. ‘Just checking,’ Ziyad said.
    The zzzzz burrowed with effortful twists down into his brain. His order was called. He took the wrap and circled around the park, hoping the face-down man would get up and leave so he could come up with a peaceful prize-winner. But the man stayed put so Ziyad continued down the road towards the cemetery where no one would mind him. There was a giant Port Jackson fig by his grandfather’s grave at the edge of the Muslim quarter. The tree’s roots lurched up in uneven arches, upon one of which Ziyad balanced his tailbone pointily. At least he was alone. The foil of his wrap made a pleasant tinkle that brought a rush of saliva to his mouth as he tore off the top. Just as he brought the warm, heavy bundle to his lips, an arriving group in the adjacent quarter erupted into laughter, giving him a start. He noted a chalk-edge to their mirth, an inflection that leapt ahead of itself, feverishly celebratory. He peered around the trunk to survey the group in greater detail; three thick-armed men and a woman with hazel hair ambled around passing a joint between them. It figured. As good a place as a cemetery was to write a peace poem it was an even better place to go off one’s face. Their speech moseyed over in a mix of wet fricatives and narrow rhotics that he struggled to place. Something about the men—the way their gazes scanned the area automatically, on the lookout for a reeking herd—made them like brothers with a licence to hunt. They continued to talk; the lower notes of their voices had the same staticky drone as whatever object was circling just out of Ziyad’s sight. His stomach began to cramp and the pooling saliva of hunger turned acidic. ‘Quiet down!’ Ziyad erupted, eyes shut tight. When he opened them again, the group was staring at him. They seemed to recognise him from afar, or something about him they didn’t like. The broadest one, with dark hairs rising out of his impressive chest, said stiffly, ‘Are you telling us to shut up because we’re Israeli?’ Ziyad hadn’t known they were Israeli but come to think of it, that made sense. Or maybe it didn’t. But his gaze lingered on their wristbands, each denoting how well trained they were in a martial art that taught how to gouge out an enemy’s eyes. His gut sent washes of gastric juice up his throat and the bottom of the wrap started to drip oil onto his pants and the whirring in his skull went haywire, none of which felt conducive to a peace poem. ‘Never mind, have the cemetery,’ Ziyad said, sounding brittle to his own ear, ‘and have my falafel wrap, too.’ He tossed it to them, fleeing. ‘I need to win!’
    This time the zzzzz stayed on his heels, nipping at him across the city, which he crossed without heed of his destination, until, out of breath, gut burning, ears ringing, Ziyad fell through the doors of a mosque into a boom of peace.
    They were almost finished with the prayer. Worshippers kneeling shoulder to shoulder raised their foreheads in unison from the ground. Ziyad sunk to his knees. The leaden quilt of devotion fell over him, dampening all. He had been stupid! Peace poem! Oh, if only right from the beginning he had gone straight to the source. God is great! his heart exclaimed, and he leapt up to perform ablutions, which rinsed his mind and soul, then ran to submerge himself in submission, wherein existed the silent monolith he had envisioned swelling to blot out all else that morning at the breakfast bar. He saw himself adrift in a blackness, no air to transmit even a sigh, where only God who listened without ears could hear him. The drone was gone. The outline of an idea shimmered in the periphery of his mind without lifting him from the deep ocean of calm.
    Machine guns opened fire outside.
    Several machine guns emptied belts of ammunition in the street next to the mosque. Inside, the worshippers all dropped to the ground with their arms thrown over their heads. Some screamed—not as loudly nor in as great number as the children in the street. The adults could not bring themselves to go to the windows. They all recognised the sounds; they could all see, in their minds, the jaws blown apart, the burnt hair and bits of flesh on the pavement, congealing. There is no God but God! Ziyad cried, preparing for the onslaught to enter.
    But the firing stopped. The chaos died away. A murmur from the street rose, a few whoops, and then some spirited cheers. One of the worshippers peeled himself off the carpet and crept towards the window, quaking as he brought himself to peer just over the sill. The others watched him, not breathing. His shoulders fell. He stood, sunk his face into his hands. ‘Firecrackers!’ he announced when he could speak. ‘The kids are doing firecrackers out in the street.’ Incredulous sighs of relief and outrage spread through the worshippers as they roused themselves from terror. People started to laugh, to distance themselves from the unreality of the incident, and eventually everyone recovered. Except Ziyad Salem, who lay motionless on the carpet—purple, cold, his hands clamped over his ears. It took a while for people to notice. They didn’t know in that country, which was at peace, that it was even possible to die from fear.

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Jumaana Abdu is the author of Translations (Vintage) which was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the MUD Literary Prize, and a NSW Premier’s Literary Award. She was named SMH Best Young Novelist in 2025, and her short fiction and essays have been awarded internationally. During the day, she is a medical doctor.