Two Poems from Shadow and LightPart of the Al-Mutannabi Street Starts Here Project Persis Karim (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 32] Shadow and Light was instigated by San Francisco Bay Area poet and activist Beau Beausoleil as part of a recent ancillary project of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here (to learn more about this project, see WLT, Sept. 2013, 72). Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here began as a response to the bombing that occurred on March 5, 2007, in the street of the booksellers in Baghdad, Iraq. He was compelled to respond to this horrific bombing; it began as a reading at the San Francisco Public Library where I first met Beau and asked to be a part of this project. Beausoleil saw the bombing as an assault on ideas, on books, on free speech, and on the very idea of culture itself; at the time, he himself was a San Francisco bookseller, and it felt close to him. Since 2007 Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here has grown from a series of readings to an edited volume of poems, a book exhibit, a collection of broadsides, and annual readings around the world to commemorate the Al-Mutanabbi Street bombing. Shadow and Light specifically memorializes the lives of academics, teachers, and educators who were killed in targeted assassinations between 2003 and 2013, a time frame roughly paralleling the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Those who have contributed to Shadow and Light are writers, photographers, and poets from all over the world who select the name of an assassinated Iraqi academic from a list of 324 murdered academics compiled by a Spanish NGO, take a picture, and respond to the photo and the information about the person who was killed. Beau has specifically asked those connected to Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here to participate in this open project, but Beausoleil wants as many others, who wish to, to participate in these acts of solidarity and witnessing. "Honoring the lives of those who were killed for the simple act of teaching/educating is an impossible task—that is why we must attempt to do it again and again," writes Beausoleil in his many emails of invitation to respond to the call. During their lifetimes, the men and women memorialized in Shadow and Light enriched diverse fields of knowledge—from history to calligraphy to the study of bees. Each assassination represented an attack on the underlying principle of education—to share knowledge—and served as a threat to scholars throughout Iraq that they were at risk. Estimates of the total number slain is about seven-hundred-plus individuals. Some of their names are still unknown, and many died with little information recorded about them. In a statement, the 2021 UC Santa Barbara online exhibition describes Shadow and Light as operating "as both a collective and artistic response but also constitut[ing] an archive, as both a testament to the lives of Iraqis and of international solidarity." Those who respond to the accompanying photographs they submit convey stories and bits of information pieced together from news sources about each person's life and death. To date, there are more than seventy-five contributors to "Shadow and Light." Exhibits and readings have been held in San Francisco (2022), UC Santa Barbara (2021), and London (2021); forthcoming exhibits of Shadow and Light will be held at London's P21 Gallery, the University of Iowa, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, and University of Illinois in 2023. This project is still open, and Beau Beausoleil invites others to write to him to participate and receive the guidelines. You can email him at overlandbooks@earthlink.net. One needn't be a professional photographer to join. What follows are my contributions of photos and poems about a wife and husband, both law professors in Mosul, who were murdered on two separate occasions between 2004 and 2005. Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 33] In the Time of Cherries by Persis Karim This is your name, not just your death, the daysomeone gunned you down at the brokenstone gates in...