Brian Turner

This isn't the way we die.

And the man who triggered the button, who may have invoked the Prophet's name or not, he has obliterated the epicenter.

He is everywhere.

He is of all things.

His touch is the air taken in, the blast and the wave, the electricity of shock.

His is the sound the heart makes quick in the panic's rush, the surge of blood searching for light and color, that sound the martyr cries, filled with the word his soul is made of.

Inshallah!

But still hanging in the air over Asher Square, the telephone line snapped in two, crackling a strange incantation the dead hear as they wander confused amongst one another, learning each other's names, trying to comfort the living in their grief, to console those who cannot accept such random pain, speaking Habib softly, one to another there in the rubble and debris, Habib, over and over, that it might not be forgotten.