What will we tell the spacemen, when they ask
Why we've let the people of Madaya starve
Why we've let them die pregnant in the barbed wire,
Their stomachs full of boiled leaves and starving cat.
Twenty thousand of them were civilians
Who voted for someone else
Moved to Madaya from their homes
By ethnic cleansing,
By soldiers following orders,
By soldiers digging up their gardens
To see if there was anything valuable buried there.
What will we tell the spacemen,
As the jet-fighters drop their bombs
Bombs worth more than hospitals
And a year's salary for all of their workers
On targets, determined by liars
Feeding lies to liars, feeding lies to the ignorant,
Whose sleep is occasionally disturbed
By the muffled thump of a bomb vest,
Worn by a child instructed to die, so the story stays
On the front page of the newspapers.
What will the spacemen say
When they hear the politicians
Demanding that we bomb the enemy
With our jets and drones
From thousands of miles away,
Complaining about the refugees coming here,
Taking our jobs and benefit payments
With their stories of rape and torture
Whilst the politicians' fat cat friends
Line their pockets with gold
From the profits of selling arms to both sides.
Forty thousand people,
Political opponents of the Syrian government
Herded into the mountain town of Madaya
As the snow falls, surrounded
By barbed wire and land mines
And the nervous triggers of the National Defense Force
A starvation prison, an oubliette
This is all the spacemen will see
And the fact that we've let them die
Because we've never learned their names
They came from a town we've never heard of
From a country we didn't understand
They didn't get pissed at the Christmas party
They didn't post pictures of their dinner on Facebook
They didn't argue about the relative merits
Of Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus
They didn't go to watch the latest Star Wars film
They were not people like us.
The spacemen will turn and look at each other
Shake their heads, shrug their shoulders
Their faces are red, they can't get anyone
To pick up the phone at the embassy
It took them 160 years to get here.
They have a cargo of trinkets to sell us
Maybe open a trade mission
Learn our languages
They haven't brought their carbon fiber armour
All that stuff's been in a museum for a thousand years.
They want their money back
The ambassador is full of apologetic messages
Citing sudden industrialization and a population boom.
With a sigh, the spacemen look at their map
Programme their spaceship
Go back to sleep
And hope the next planet
Doesn't have a welcome mat
That says: Fuck Off!
In 2016, the town of Madaya in Western Syria
Is why we are alone in the universe.
Image reads:
Madaya .. Allah has got you!
Source: Madaya Facebook community page
Besieged Madaya
