IN ALEPPO

Playing football in the dust outside my home

My brother Ahmed is in goal

In the shadow of our apartment block we play

This life in Aleppo

It is the only life we know

My mother’s upstairs cooking lamb and rice and beans

My father he works nights he’s sleeping on the couch

My sister Layla walking past in her new veil

My baby brother Abdullah

He just likes to sit and watch

Then I see my sister looking up

Something moving fast and then a flash of light

Then I’m flying through the air and my world turns upside down

And my day turns into night

When they pull me from the rubble they’re all gone

I no longer have a family I no longer have a home

I’m crying as I try to understand what’s going on

Why the only life I’ve known is over

Why the life I knew is gone

Then the men with beards come

Say that I must go with them

I’m now a soldier in their holy war

It is Allah’s will they say

Six months later finds me in this foreign land

A deadly waistcoat hidden underneath my shawl

I don’t want to kill I don't want to die

But I no longer have a choice

The men with beards are watching me I know

There is a trigger hidden in my hand

I’m a soldier in their holy war

It is what Allah wants they say

But I wonder as I pull the trigger

How can they be so sure?

Colin Payne