Flies

With the return of hot weather, a plague of flies has descended on Iraq or at least to every bit of outdoor space in the International Zone. This is a new phenomenon to me as one who arrived here last November when it was cold. Those who have been here longer fully expected it and were not surprised at their return.

“Where did they come from?” I ask. “The eggs are dormant during the winter. When the weather warms, they hatch. Just like the mosquitoes.” Oh, great.

Common house flies in North America are docile compared to these pests. They aggressively fly around your head, taking special pleasure to land on your cheek or neck. Back home, a simple wave of the hand is all that’s needed to dismiss them. Here, it is taken as a challenge. The flies here are oblivious to danger and bent on harassment. They seem smaller, more nimble, more evolved.

My torment reminds me of a seminal poem by Charles Bukowski entitled, “Two Flies.” My friend, and then co-worker, Bill first made me aware of this poem in 1996. It’s worth quoting in its entirety:

Two Flies

The flies are angry bits of
life;
why are they so angry?
it seems they want more,
it seems almost as if they
are angry
that they are flies;

it is not my fault;
I sit in the room
with them
and they taunt me
with their agony;

it is as if they were
loose chunks of soul
left out of somewhere;

I try to read a paper
but they will not let me
be;

one seems to go in half-circles
high along the wall,
throwing a miserable sound
upon my head;

the other one, the smaller one
stays near and teases my hand,
saying nothing,
rising, dropping
crawling near;

what god puts these
lost things upon me?
other men suffer dictates of
empire, tragic love...
I suffer
insects...

I wave at the little one
which only seems to revive
his impulse to challenge:
he circles swifter,
nearer, even making
a fly-sound,

and the one above
catching a sense of the new
whirling, he too, in excitement,
speeds his flight,
drops down suddenly
in a cuff of noise

and they join
in circling my hand,
strumming the base
of the lampshade
until some man-thing
in me
will take no more
unholiness
and I strike
with the rolled-up paper –
missing! –
striking,
striking,

they break in discord,
some message lost between them,

and I get the big one
first, and he kicks on his back
flicking his legs
like an angry whore,
and I come down again
with my paper club
and he is a smear
of fly-ugliness;

the little one circles high
now, quiet and swift,
almost invisible;
he does not come near
my hand again;
he is tamed and
inaccessible; I leave
him be, he leaves me be;
the paper, of course,
is ruined;

something has happened,
something has soiled my
day,
sometimes it does not
take a man
or a woman,
only something alive;

I sit and watch
the small one;
we are woven together
in the air
and the living;
it is late
for both of us.

--Charles Bukowski