By Matt Cantor

It’s been a full year, now.  

It’s October 7th. 

I stand at the platform at Kenmore, waiting for a D-train so I can get home to have dinner with my parents. I’m not waiting very hard. They’re going to ask all sorts of questions about what I’ve been working on.  

“Don Quixote,”  I’ll tell them.  

“Hasn’t somebody already written that?”  they’ll ask me.  

“Lots of people have already written lots of things.”—like it means anything, or makes any sort of difference in the direction that I want it to.  

“But why this? Why Don Quixote?” 

“La ilaha Ilallah, Muhammadun Rasullah,”  I’ll tell them, and they won’t understand a word of it.  

A D-train finally appears up on the “Upcoming Trains” readout—fifteen minutes. It is what it is. There’s no hurry that can make itself happen. Not without a car, or maybe a bike—traffic passing above, you can sometimes feel it down here in little rumbles and hums.  “La ilaha Ilallah Muhammadun Rasullah,”  murmurs the world, every rock and stone.  

Miguel Cervantes 
Sits on his couch in his apartment in Kenmore Square 
Watching a video over and over 
Instead of going to visit his parents. 
A girl, 
Can’t be more than eleven, 
Maybe twelve, 
Laid out on a dirty hospital-room floor. 
Her skin is white with 
Ash or 
Soot or 
Plaster from 
What had used to be 
Her ceiling. 
It’s caked over her body and 
Her face, 
Into her mouth 
And down her throat. 
She cannot breathe, 
She cannot breathe, 
She cannot breathe, 
But she is gasping just the same—
Her mouth open and shut, 
Open and 
Shut, 
Like a fish— 
She is trying to breathe—
She cannot breathe—
Or maybe she is trying to scream. 
It’s difficult to tell.  

Someone, 
Somewhere, 
Is responsible for this.  

My phone is buzzing—like the rumble and hum of the traffic. My mother is texting—“ETA?” 

Basma is texting. I have to copy-paste what she’s sent me through Google Translate—“Have you heard? The Crossing will open again soon. The evacuations will finally start.” 

“Masha’Allah,”  I tell her.  “Still waiting for the train,”  I tell my mother.  “Next one in twelve min.” 

A C-train rolls by. It has ads on the side of it—“Chronic Migraines? Take part in a paid study at Mass General Hospital.”—“Enroll at WGU.”—there’s a picture of an owl on that one, which I like a lot.  “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.” 

A picture of striped pajamas. You know the striped pajamas.  

It puts a certain feeling inside of my mother, seeing that ad—every time she sees it. It puts a certain feeling inside of all of us, or it’s supposed to, at least.  

It’s October 7th. 

Someone, 
Somewhere, 
Is responsible for this.  

People get off, on the train. It rolls away—rumbles away, hums into the darkness—“La ilaha Ilallah, Muhammadun Rasullah.”—it bears witness.  

Miguel Cervantes sits on his couch 
And he stares. 
The girl’s left arm is 
Still 
Attached to her body, 
But it has been blown completely 
Open 
By the force of the bomb—
Or maybe torn by the shrapnel. 
Or maybe she has gotten 
Shot 
One, 
Two, 
Three times. 

It’s October 7th. 

Miguel Cervantes, 
Can see clear through 
To the bone. 

It is an 
Exquisite 
Lesson in anatomy.  

The layers of tissue in the human upper arm run as follows: 

-The Epidermis:  

The outer layer of skin. The topmost sublayer of the  epidermis is the  stratum corneum. Beneath this is the  stratum lucidum, followed by the  stratum granulosum, and then the  stratum spinosum. The final sublayer beneath all of this is the  stratum basale. 

-The Dermis: 

This thicker layer contains the hair-follicles, as well as all the blood-vessels, both veins and arteries, running up and down from the deeper layers. 

-The Hypodermis: 

This layer marks the transition between skin-cells and fat-cells. Larger blood vessels run through this layer, as well as small, slender nerve-cells, branching off from the major ganglia. 

-The Myofascial Layer: 

This thin layer of cells is responsible for holding the tissues of the muscles in place. This region also contains the nerve ganglia and blood vessels of the upper arm, including the  nervus ulnaris,  nervus radialis,  nervus medianus, and the various  nervus cutanii—as well as the  arteria collateralii, arteria brachialis, and the  vena basilica.  

-The Muscles: 

The upper arm’s musculature is composed of the  biceps  and  triceps. These muscles are attached to the bone layer by a series of ligaments and tendons. 

-The Bone: 

The long bone of the upper-arm, the  humerus, connects the  scapula  in the shoulder to the  radius  and  ulna  at the elbow.  

-The Marrow: 
Someone, somewhere, is responsible for this.  

Responsibility weighs two-thousand pounds of outwards explosive pressure.  

The girl’s 
Skin and 
Fat and 
Nerves and 
Fascia and 
Muscle fibers 
All 
Hang slack from her bone, 
Her humerus, 
All 
That is left intact— 
The flesh dangles 
And swings 
Like the limp pages of an 
Open 
Book— 
Full of romantic nonsense 
And pointless chivalry— 

She is 
Awake. 
She is 
Alive. 

Cervantes stares 
At this girl, 
And he wishes 
She could 
die. 

On October 7th, 1944, a group of prisoners at Auschwitz Birkenau began to fight with homemade and scavenged weapons against their German guards, who swiftly blew up the crematorium in which they’d been hiding with an outwards explosive pressure of two-thousand pounds.  

It was far away from Boston—all the way across the Atlantic, and then some. It was long ago. But they’re right, too: it could happen again; it could happen again; it could happen again.  

“La ilaha Ilallah, Muhammadun Rasullah,”  I text Basma.  

She’s the first person I’m telling.  

“I’m going to die,”  she texts me back.  “They have bombed the hospital where my sister was having surgery for her arm. Everything has collapsed on us. I am in the dark in the rubble. I cannot see anything but my phone. I cannot move. I cannot breathe. I cannot find my daughters. I am in pain. Something has happened to my body. It feels like my left arm is gone.” 

A B-train comes rolling out of the darkness at the far end of the tunnel, rumbling and humming—or no, it’s not making any sort of sound at all. Nothing but ringing in my ears.  

I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe. 
I cannot breathe. 
I cannot breathe. 
I cannot breathe. 
My lungs won’t work. 

She cannot breathe. 

My stomach—my liver, my intestines—my head—my arms are weak, dangling—my knees are about to fall out from under me—straight through the floor and down, down, down forever towards the core of the Earth. I can’t stay standing. I can’t keep my eyes open—and I can’t close them. All the blood has suddenly left a dozen different parts of my body, but I don’t know at all where it has gone instead. Is it pouring out of the nightmarish gash in my left arm? Is it pouring out of the gaping wound where my left arm used to be? Is it pouring out of my 

One 
Two 
Three 
Bullet-holes?—
Two 
To the chest, 
One 
To the shoulder? 

Is it pouring from the torn-off vessels of my heart, draining away? 

Who is 
Responsible 
For this? 

On October 7th, 1571, Don Miguel Cervantes was shot one, two, three times during the Battle of Lepanto between Spanish and Turkish forces. As a result of his injuries, he lost the use of his left arm, and spent much of the rest of his life referring to himself as “Saavedra”—from the Arabic “Shaibedraa,” meaning “One-handed.”

One hand 
Isn’t nearly enough for Basma 
To dig herself out of the rubble 
Or to reach her daughters 
Or to do anything but text me— 
“La ilaha Ilallah, 
Muhammadun Rasullah.” 

One last Shahada 
Might be enough. 
Who knows? 

“Please don’t die,”  I text her.  “Please.” 

She congratulates me on my reversion. She’s so honored to be the first to know. She asks if I’ve found a mosque nearby, yet. She says she wishes she could tell her sisters. She says she’s so proud of me—they would be too. She says she wishes she could tell her daughters, too. She says that now I will be able to pray for her. She says that she doesn’t mean that I haven’t been praying for her up until now, or that my prayers haven’t been counting—that’s not what she means at all. She means that it will mean something more to her, now—maybe to her, or maybe not to her, or she doesn’t really know. She is just so happy for me. She is thinking of things to say on my behalf, soon—it’s the first thing she will do, she’s decided. She asks me if I’m going to try to celebrate my first Ramadan this year, or build up to it for next year. She tells me that fasting can be pretty difficult if you’re not used to it. She tells me to look up some tricks on the internet—there are definitely some which help. She tells me that what really matters is that I do my best—that’s what really counts. She starts to tell me a story about the first Ramadan she can remember. She says something funny about one of her sisters. She stops responding.  

I need to know 
Who is 
Responsible for this.  

“It’s their own fault,” comes a voice from down the tunnel—rumbling and humming?—gurgling and groaning, smug and callous. It says all the things that people say. It “what”s the “about”s. It “they should have thought of that”s the “before”s and “this is only” the “because”s. I spy a pair of blazing orange eyes there, in the darkness, coming closer. The world is gurgling and groaning, shifting and shaking—who is responsible for this?  

There is a sickness that is underneath everything. There is a dragon lurking in the darkness of our tunnels and our arteries. There is a monster. There is a menace. There is an ugly truth in the world—bleak and unbearable, based and debauched—who is responsible for this?—it’s the wrong question.  

Who is going to 
Do something 
About it? 

I don’t hesitate; I turn to the man standing next to me on the platform and I grab his blue-and-white polka-dot umbrella—snatch it right out of his hands, and I don’t hesitate; I leap down onto the tracks, as those blazing red eyes come closer, closer, grumbling and groaning—and now screeching, high-pitched and wild—a battle-cry. But I’ll do it one better; I raise my umbrella in my left hand, point-first, towards the onrushing monster.  

“Have at thee!!!” 

It simply screeches again. I’ve got it frightened, I know—that’s why it’s trying so hard to frighten me back. But it’s not going to work. I will not be bent aside—not any longer. I will not cower away from this any longer. Someone has to do something.  

This can’t just go on. Someone has to stop the windmills from spinning.  

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Matt Cantor is a surrealist from Boston, Massachusetts whose work focuses on the strange and bittersweet. Currently, he is working on the project “Gaza Closed Captions,” which focuses on capturing in prose and poetry many of the images and videos coming out of the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, before it is lost or suppressed. You can find his work at mattcantorwriting.com and at “Gaza_Closed_Captions” on Instagram.