You were snapped in half when I left. You were the first bridge; Iron bridge, to be constructed in Baghdad. You connected the two halves of Baghdad, crossing over the Tigris that cracks the city in half. You had your Iron arms welded to braid a series of triangular webs on either side of you. You seemed rigid, sturdy, and unsnapable.
When I left, you had a gap in the middle that was framed with deformed iron arms bent like a witch’s fingers. When you snapped, did you see the cars slide down to Tigris? Did you see the bodies float? Did you wish they tried not to cross to the other half?
I don’t know what you saw or wished, but I know that you snapped in a thunder. A red earthly thunder that released black clouds. Your iron arms creaked in defeat, and you knelt into Tigris in surrender, to finally break the weave of your iron arms. I wasn’t there when it happened, but you told me the story in your deformations; in your gap. The joints in my bones stiffed at the story. How could you endure such breakage when you are the connector?
You bent closer to Tigris and wailed at my question “But why me?” “Why my arms?” you cried with a rusted wail. Because it’s you. You crossed Tigris, and made way to trains and cars, you launched modernity in Baghdad, you connected the two halves. You lift the Mesopotamian sunrise with your arms.
I bring my nose close to your melted arms, and sense the throbbing heat in you iron. I cool it with my exhales, and whisper to you iron:”It had to be you”.
By MohammadHuzam - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60446538