By Susanna Juon-Gilk

Often at night I lie awake, unable to sleep. Happenings; things which move or puzzle me, troublesome and unresolved thoughts surround and spin a web around me. This in itself is nothing unusual. It happens to most people.

The day before I had been at the local library and had checked again the website, www.iraqbodycount.org, as I had done in previous weeks and months. …7000-9000 civilian deaths, images and articles which the mainstream media refuse to print or show. “Daily 100 injured people arrive at local hospitals in Iraq … bodies of women and children, often with lost limbs.” I search in vain for information about numbers of dead or wounded Iraqi soldiers. Nobody seems to know or keep track of them. But I know their wives, mothers, children, sisters and brothers mourn them as deeply as we mourn our soldiers.

I think about the stories in the book I am reading, Hell, Resistance and Healing by Daniel Hallock, stories of war veterans whose bodies survived the trauma of war but whose minds and souls cannot find peace after what they have endured, seen and done.

But most of all I think about the story of Faith Fippinger that has pierced me, sent by a friend from Alaska. The article appeared in the Anchorage Daily News and describes this brave woman’s life and her trip to Iraq this past spring. Willingly she exposed herself to the dangers of war, determined to be with and suffer alongside the Iraqi people. As she came back to the USA, as Kelly Benham writes about her, “When she sees pregnant women, she thinks of an Iraqi woman who lost both arms and delivered a baby she could not hold.”

This image does not leave me. I cannot sleep. I try to pray: O Lord, God, be merciful, be merciful! I move my hands under the blankets. They are flexible, become tender, soft and gentle. God willing, in a month they will hold my daughter’s hand, whose healthy body will labor and deliver a child. I will hold that newborn and with joy and tenderness run my fingers over his silky cheek. My hands - I love my hands like maybe never before.

How does the armless woman caress her child? Her bandaged stumps held out like the broken-off ends of a cross, she bends down, her lips touch the child’s face and cover it with kisses, her nose smells and nuzzles like an animal mother does, and her tears wash the face of the newborn.

O Lord, have mercy on us!

This woman does not let me alone. My thoughts are unclear and go in all directions, awash with despair, stumblings of prayer and a need to do something, to show this armless mother who is unable to hold her new baby to those who had urged us to go to war.

My thoughts become dreams: I ought to buy that piece of land in Merrill, north of Highway 64, between the bridges on the Wisconsin River. It is for sale, maybe a quarter of an acre. It would be enough. I’ll make it into a little park, a place of peace, a garden with many flowers, bushes, trees, trails and wooden benches for sitting and looking out onto the river. But in the center would be a sculpture of the armless woman, elevated and a little larger than life size, so that we would have to look up into her face. I’ll have to find the finest artist, maybe someone like the German woman Kate Kollwitz, or Paula Moderson - a woman artist, a mother , skilled, with a deep and wise soul.

An image is forming in my mind. The mother sits with her legs crossed, like a buddha. The bandaged stumps of what is left of her arms awkwardly want to reach out - so visible and O so useless. Behind her is another woman, her sister, and friend. This woman is crouching and pressing her upper body against the mother’s back, embracing her from behind. Her hands hold the little newborn child against the mother’s breast so she can nurse him. The sister’s head leans on the mother’s shoulder, eyes half closed; she cries, and streams of water flow over the mother’s shoulder, into the folds of her clothes and are caught in a shallow pool surrounding the threesome. The mother looks at her child, but her eyes also search ours; and we, who stand there, dare not withdraw our gaze. Some call her the Muslim Madonna.

I see children sitting on the rim of the little pool, splashing with naked rosy feet in the water, socks and tennis shoes next to them. Sometimes a school bus stops. The history teacher brings his students. They spill noisily out of the bus, but after learning the story of the woman, they leave quietly. Mothers and fathers, sitting on the benches know the inscription on the fountain by heart. This is what it says:

Many people come here, and many come back again. They are drawn to this place. It keeps teaching them. The artist’s work keeps speaking. It’s a place where compassion, violence, innocent suffering, a cry for forgiveness, guilt and humility meet, where weapons are laid down and slowly we start to understand, not just in our heads, but with our whole being, that violence and war solve nothing but cause unending sorrow.

The dawning light is showing through the bedroom window. I have been awake for a long time. Am I indulging in sentimentality? I don’t know. The armless woman exists, is real, and this is how I cope with this brutal reality. Right now I can only pray for her, that her very suffering will soften our stony hearts.