I return from Mass to a Muslim home
on a bloodied street in the south of Iraq.
The family has gathered in the living room.
All the chairs are gone, sold years ago
for something essential. Food, perhaps.

It is the night before Christmas,
holiest night of the Christian year
when angel choirs fill the heavens
and three kings from the Orient
kneel before a star-crossed child.

Bushra in blue in the doorway stands
sipping a small glass of tea.
“Baba George,” she says
with teasing affection.
I smile and she smiles too.
We have only just met and already
I am like a father,
old and gray.

The gray old man from America
who has come to Basra
and this house on a street
where all the homes were blasted away
and children were killed
by an American missile
gone astray.

One of them, Haidar, was only six.
His mother, still in mourning, pours our tea
and serves us cookies from a tarnished tray.
The kettle keeps warm on top of the heater.
The older children sing songs in Arabic.
An infant nurses in her mother’s arms.

The lights flicker and go out.
All of Basra has gone to black.
No one in the room is troubled.
Tonight there are no sirens going mad,
no F-16’s mumbling obscenities.
After all, it’s Christmas Eve.

Um Haidar fetches a kerosene lamp.
By its quaint, quivering light
we see each other again.
Bushra crosses the room.
She fixes the scarf that covers her hair
and sits on the carpet beside me.

She is attractive, only thirty-two
but still unmarried.
We talk the way people do
when they are first becoming friends.
I tell her what my work is like
and ask about her name.

My mother always wanted a girl
but each time she have a boy.
The last time was different.
When she wake up in the hospital,
my father say, “Good news! We have a daughter!”
My mother was so happy
she decide to name me Bushra,
which means ‘good news’
or ‘the one who brings good news.’

In the room, lit by lantern light,
a mother holds her child.
I open my camera to record
this humble human treasure.
Bushra asks if she could try.
As I show her how it’s done,
she listens intently.
I feel her breath.
Her breath, softer than the softest rose,
touches and touches my hand.

This moment, brief and fragile,
more precious than frankincense or myrrh,
made of many dazzling bits–
the gentle pulse of Bushra’s breath,
her newborn niece in its mother’s arms,
our simply being here like this,
at peace in a time of war.

Love has no country.