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# Disbeliever
- URL: https://www.merip.org/2000/03/disbeliever/
- Published: 2000-03-02T17:04:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-07-29T12:48:46.000Z
- Description: In January 1998, unidentified gunmen entered a movie theater and small mosque near Algiers and massacred 120 men, women and children. By the hunger of the children of Iraq By the sound of frantic running in Kosovo By the swollen bodies in a river in Rwanda and Afghani women and the writers of Algie
- Author: Mohja Kahf
- Tags: MER Article, Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, Issue 214, #Up Front

*In January 1998, unidentified gunmen entered a movie theater and small mosque near Algiers and massacred 120 men, women and children.*

By the hunger of the children of Iraq  
By the sound of frantic running in Kosovo  
By the swollen bodies in a river in Rwanda  
and Afghani women and the writers of Algiers,  
I am a disbeliever

in everything that refuses to kiss full on the lips  
the ones still living  
and receive them in the bosom of the self,  
no matter the religion or the nation or the race  
I am a disbeliever in everything  
that does not say "How was the movie? I love you"

I need a body outside my life to travel and kneel  
on the sidewalk beside a movie theater in Algiers  
over the bodies of the supple children who will never be my children's playmates or marry them  
over the bodies of the men and women who  
will never phone me from Algiers --  
"How was the movie? I love you. I love you."

I need time outside the world  
where I can whisper in the ear of each of them,  
By God, you will never be forgotten  
By God, I will make sure the world  
buries its face in your beautiful hair,  
sings to you, learns your name and your music,  
lifts you up in the crook of its arm like a gift

I am a disbeliever  
in everything but the purity of the bodies  
of those men and women -- with or without the veil,  
with or without the markings of the right identity --  
in everything but the suppleness of the children  
I am a disbeliever in every scripture  
in the world that leaves out  
"How was the movie? I love you. I love you."