This Has Happened Before
Written for Sexual Assault Awareness Month
I.
a woman in Gaza recounts her and her daughter’s sexual assault;
how the soldiers forced them to undress under threat of death,
how they survey rows of human bodies like butchers.
videos of trucks carting naked men and boys in their trunks,
hands bound, eyes covered, on Instagram,
which my aunt and council member both repost.
a dating profile of a man in an IOF uniform, posing before a wall of women’s underwear. 25 year
old men with American accents rifling through a stranger’s armoire, laughing. they take the
garments home with children’s toys, call them prizes.
a girl who might’ve been as young as 10 – but was probably 15 –
is taken captive at an IOF base
in 1949, August 22nd.
i will not read you the multitude of ways they violated her final days
before digging her grave in front of her.
on March 16th, 1950: two girls and a boy.
August that year, a 26 year old woman.
in 2024, an iof soldier drags a 7 year old girl from the porch of her home,
and the caption on the video says “this has happened before,
but we’ve never gotten it on camera.”
II.
the New York Times publishes a report on systemic sexual violence
by Hamas. this is their pitch from the outset.
the prestigous paper hires a woman who advocates turning gaza into a slaughterhouse to
write it. they ignore institutions that give them insufficient evidence
of rape. they resort to the organization that spread the lie of the baby in the oven, that
had manufactured tales of Arab savagery,
which kick-started this so-called war;
tales that America co-authors.
tales that Biden endorses.
tales that your uncle believes.
tales that your cousin repeats.
tales that say people are animals,
people are tumors,
people are bombs.
tales that say people are property.
tales that say people are illegal.
tales that are as old as white man’s conquest.
tales that say they were never people anyway,
even their children,
especially their children.
III.
the Spanish after invading the Philippines, said
Chief Lapu-Lapu cannibalized the body of Magellan,
after shooting him with a poisoned arrow on Mactan Beach
an act of resistance which postponed our colonization for over 40 years.
we lived under Spain for 300, then Japan, then the so-called United States.
Zionists tell woman they would be raped in Gaza.
they tell queer people that we would be killed.
they tell Jewish people the same.
they leave messages filled with fantasies of violence.
in David Henry Hwang’s M Butterfly, a French diplomat says
the Chinese natives want to be conquered. it is in their feminine nature
to desire a masculine overlord, no matter how much they protest
it is the message he sends to the U.S., regarding their invasion of Vietnam.
she wants it, even if she says she doesn’t.
and if she doesn’t, it’s the natural order of things.
and if it’s not, it ought to be.
this has happened before.
Apostol Mohamed is a part-time student and part-time writer, focusing mainly on poetry and short stories. Their work has been featured in SamFiftyFour, The Promethean, and We the Writers, in which they were credited as Lex Mohamed, and he is currently working on an in-development project with Choice of Games. In their free time, they enjoy writing Letterboxd reviews and fan-fiction. He’ll never tell you his account name. His pronouns are he/they.
The Marbled Sigh 