For Lahib Nouman, a victim of Iraqi torture

You are haunted

Your bones were broken

And re-knit with rape, glass, and maggoty bread.

You can write it out of your head,

But you have to grow it out of your bones.

In my prayers I welcome you into my home.

Your damaged soul must be protected

By thick white bones grown in goodness,

Forged without impurity.

First, we'll turn off the news.

We will set the table with a vase of flowers every night,

Dandelions, carefully chosen by innocent girl hands,

Splashes of yellow to purge the gray of prison walls.

I will serve you crunchy sweet vegetables

And pillows of fresh bread,

The international language of mother-nurture.

We will spend our days

Holding babies and kneading seeds into soil.

And, in time,

We will pull out death

And saturate your soul with love

In our hyper baric chamber of life.

Kelly,

I'm afraid the news from Baghdad is not good. Lahib's mental state has deteriorated badly -- and her sisters continue to shun her. She has taken to wandering the streets, picking through garbage and bringing home bags full of trash. She refuses to communicate with her neighbors, and they're growing hostile towards her. Only a few local shopkeepers continue to give her food and basic provisions.

To make matters worse, her neighborhood is not safe for foreigners, which means I can't go to her. I've had some of my Iraqi staff go and talk to her, but she refuses to let them in the house. Speaking through the window, she's said she wants nothing to do with anybody. She was told about you and the poem, but she has refused to come out and collect your gifts. My Iraqi colleague offered to leave the package outside her door, for her to collect later, but she screamed at him and ordered him away.

My only hope now is for Father Zanbaqa, her priest, to draw her out of the house and to church. If he can do that -- and this is by no means certain -- then maybe, just maybe, I can persuade doctors from the US military psych unit to take a look at her. The trouble is, she has not been going to church for quite a while now. I'll keep you posted on how things turn out.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of depressing news. You can imagine the despair I feel. For me, Lahib is the personification of Iraq. Like the country as a whole, she was brutalized by Saddam's regime, then she had a brief glimmer of hope after the war, but things have now gone bad again.

But I'm not about to give up on her. I have now been posted to Baghdad on a long assignment, until the end of 2005. This means I can keep trying to make contact with her, and explore other ways of getting help to her.

I hope your exhibition is going well.

Cheers,

Aparisim "Bobby" Ghosh
Senior Correspondent
TIME Magazine