Here I Throw Down My Heart

The Art of War

94 The Art of War 1. on the road between Amman and the border trucks haul their cargo of fuel from the souks of the old city to the war: blink and you’d swear this scene came straight from Mad Max the desert painted in ochre hues that even diesel smog cannot dim 2. at Dar al Anda Gallery the scene is stationed among artworks from neighboring wars: the artist says you need only stand in one spot for more than a minute to see those incredible patterns of pain cast upon the desert floor like so many grains of sand: life intertwined with death she says I simply salvage what is there 3. each day the violence spreads she says and I take my work from what it leaves scattered on the road to create villages from vehicles that failed on a vagrant right turn or hit a straight-away of oily sand: the flotsam and jetsam turned into a montage of cylinders, spark plugs, and gas lines families of tire shards and shell casings 95 4. lines lead the eye or divert it: sand houses, gear shaft temples, palm trees blackened with oil and bodies from the litter of the living and the dead: upright or oblique posed as if they have just been plucked from the scorched earth as if the sky can bring them help not found at ground level: my people she says made from the debris of vengeance 5. we’re in the safety of Dar al Anda a place where artists come from the war torn north south and east: Amman lies quiet on the hills sloping above us she says how important it is to have some way to mark destruction how a life no matter how small can add to the carnage and with distance she arranges what is left after the flames have died 6. so many villages are gone, she says: the afternoon light sharpens silhouettes and she tilts her head look, she says, you can almost see them moving with the sun ...