Song of the Al-Ameriya shelter
Children are playing round the gates of the Al-Ameriya shelter
People are praying by the hole where the laser bomb came through
There are bloody burnt shadows from the bodies that melted
A monument demands to know what we will do
But the children are playing with untroubled eyes
Dead women and children are resting in Paradise
The killers are sleeping secure in their beds
And the whole world is crying, remembering our dead.
On a February night in Nineteen-ninetyone
The people took refuge from United States bombs
Reconnaissance planes had pin-pointed the target
And now we stand silent, we shall never forget
But the children are playing with untroubled eyes
Dead women and children are resting in Paradise
The killers are sleeping secure in their beds
And the whole world is crying, remembering our dead.
The first bomb penetrated the thick concrete bunker
And the steel doors crashed shut with a noise like thunder
The fire-bomb followed and it burnt up the air:
Inside the shelter four hundred died there
Oh-oh-h, the dead of the Al-Ameria shelter
Oh-oh-h, no use to weep and to mourn
Oh-oh-h, don't pretend you are helpless
Oh-oh-h, we must fight for those yet unborn
This wasn't an accident, a by-product of war
But deliberate terror, carefully planned and what's more
Each one who died was a victim of murder
And the guilt are planning worse crimes in our name
But the children are playing with untroubled eyes
Dead women and children are resting in Paradise
The killers are sleeping secure in their beds
And the whole world is crying, remembering our dead.
The youngest to die was just forty days young
A woman seventy-five, all her days had been sung
Each one a life precious, with lives left to live
Cut off in their prime; how can we forgive?
But the children are playing with untroubled eyes
Dead women and children are resting in Paradise
The killers are sleeping secure in their beds
And the whole world is crying, remembering our dead.
All we who remain have a duty to try
Not only to stop bombs that fall from the sky
It's life and life only we stand to defend
Remembering the dead and their bitter end
But the children are playing with untroubled eyes
Dead women and children are resting in Paradise
The killers are sleeping secure in their beds
And the whole world is crying, remembering our dead.
Oh-oh-h, the dead of the Al-Ameria shelter
Oh-oh-h, no use to weep and to mourn
Oh-oh-h, don't pretend you are helpless
Oh-oh-h, we must fight for those yet unborn
February 22, 2003, Baghdad
