Singing for Our Lives

Singing for Our Lives or The Killing of Hawas Mallah, Mohammed Salameh, Charlie Howard, and Ali Fazeli Monfared

Palmyra, Syria

The highest point in the town should be found and the homosexual should be thrown head first from it, then stones should be thrown at him. 

Abd Allah ibn Abbas

This book started as another project, “The Flying Men of Syria.” It would have been based in part on the June 13, 2016, article from the Associated Press as a way to document the sanctioned killing of gay men. In “Islamic State group targets gays with brutal public killings,” Bassem Mroue writes the following:

It began when IS (Islamic State) militants blared on loudspeakers for men to gather. Then a black van pulled up outside the Wael Hotel, and Mallah and Salameh were brought out.

The first to be thrown off was Mallah. He was tied to a chair so he couldn’t resist, then pushed over the side.

He landed on his back, broken but still moving. A fighter shot him in the head.

Next was Salameh. He landed on his head and died immediately. Still, fighters stoned his body, Omar said.

The bodies were then hung up in Palmyra’s Freedom Square for two days, each with a placard on his chest: “He received the punishment for practicing the crime of Lot’s people.”

Garland, Maine

Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there.

Henry David Thoreau

This is not a story set in an exotic foreign land where we might feel at liberty to judge. This is not a story focusing on violent mistreatment of others by others. This story starts where the Kenduskeag Stream starts, at Garland Pond in Garland, Maine. Initially, it first conforms to Corinth Road, bending around Garland Christian Fellowship. On a map, the stream looks like unruly automatic writing. It has even inspired Henry David Thoreau’s in “The Maine Woods.” And in later days, it reemerges, winding through Steven King’s fictional town of Derry.

In the Penobscot language, Kenduskeag means eel weir place – that barrier in which to get trapped. Roughly forty miles on, the Kenduskeag Stream dumps into the Penobscot River as the two converge in Bangor. A paper boat released at the stream’s headwater will eventually pass under Bangor’s State Street Bridge moments before meeting the Penobscot River.

Bangor, Maine

We are a gentle, angry people and we are singing, singing for our lives.

Holly Near

On Saturday, July 7, 1984, Charlie Howard is looking forward to the potluck organized by Interweave, an affinity and support group through the Unitarian Universalist Church of Bangor. ‘Poor Charlie’ is the first thought that comes to my mind. He is slight, fair haired, asthmatic, perennially bullied, occasionally prone to a bit of eye makeup, and with a habit of calling people ‘dearie.’ It is unfair that ‘Poor Charlie’ readily comes to mind but so much about his life is unfair. What comes next is a violence that stains Bangor, Queen City of the East.

That night, a musical is being performed at the Bangor riverfront. “Well, ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here …” hangs in the air like the memory of a cigarette. It lingers long past the exhalation. For James Bains (15 y/o), Shawn Mabry (16 y/o), and Daniel Ness (17 y/o), it is a typical summer night. They have been drinking all day. They are driving around the city from party to party, picking up a couple of girls along the way, and looking to buy more beer.

Charlie and his friend, Roy, are walking to the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building to pick up Charlie’s mail. James, Shawn, and Daniel slowly cruise up to them, jump out of the car and start the chase. “Hey, fags!” Charlie recognizes the car from an earlier altercation so he  and Roy begin to run away.

Roy outdistances Charlie. Charlie trips and falls. James, Shawn, and Daniel begin to beat Charlie. Roy searches for help. He pulls a fire alarm to get attention. James wants to throw Charlie off the bridge. James and Daniel scoop Charlie up and manhandle him over the guide rail. Charlie holds on, pleading that he can’t swim. Shawn gives Charlie the final push; he plunges 15 feet, terrified, into the water. He can’t swim. They know that he can’t swim. The boys, laughing all the way, return to their partying. Charlie’s body is found hours later, caught up in a river weir.

The next morning, Daniel turns himself in while James and Shawn plan to hop a train out of town, out of Bangor, out of the Queen City of the East. They are too lazy to actually hop the train and are later arrested at their respective homes. The three spend the night in the Hancock County Jail. Sergeant Thomas Placella, chief detective on this case, gives his summation of the assailants, “I’m not trying to lessen the severity of the crimes, but it’s not like these were axe murderers. These people came from respectable families who own property in the city of Bangor.”

Judge David Cox releases the three murder suspects, without bail, to their parents. The girls, Jennifer Vafiades and Shawna Vanidestine, are not charged or rarely even identified in the press. Someone later tags a wall nearby the State Street Bridge with “faggots jump here.” Locals begin referring to the bridge as Chuck-A-Homo Bridge. The boys are tried as juveniles, found guilty, and sentenced to a term not to exceed their 21st birthdays. ”I don’t think they went down to the bridge to kill someone,” Mr. Fahey, the high school principal, opines to the New York Times. ”They might have gone down there to harass someone. And I don’t think it was because Howard was gay. It was because he was weak, like kids yelling at drunks.”

Years later Shawn admits that, as a youth, he and friends would regularly hunt for and bash gay men. There is at least one written account that Shawn would play the enticing bait. Years later, James speaks publicly about hate crimes and contributes to “Penitence: A True Story” authored by Edward Armstrong for which James takes no compensation. Years later, Daniel is silent, off the grid, absent. Years later, the Queen City of the East, through a memorial to Charlie, hopes, “May we, the citizens of Bangor, continue to change the world around us until hatred becomes peacemaking and ignorance becomes understanding.”

Ahvaz, Iran

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

Howard Zinn

On May 5, 2021, my Instagram feed begins to blow up with images of Ali Fazeli Monfared. He is an attractive 20-year-old Iranian man, someone whom I have never met nor followed on social media. He was beheaded yesterday in an “honor killing” by two of his male cousins and his half-brother, who learned of his sexual orientation through his military service exemption card.

Colophon

I am writing this in the summer of 2021, a time of pandemic, cries for social justice, and what can only be described as batshit crazy politicians trying to deny the election of a US president. I grew up in Madawaska, Maine, 205 miles north of Bangor. Madawaska is another town on a river with a bridge. I was born 99 days before Charlie Howard, who shares my husband’s birth date and year.

On July 7th, 1984, I was working 488 miles away, in the Catskills of New York. I have long wanted to bring to the foreground the story of Charlie’s last day but struggled with the connection to today, the contemporary relevance. There is strong connective tissue between Bangor and Palmyra or Ahvaz. There is a shared fate for Charlie Howard, Hawas Mallah, Mohammed Salameh, Ali Fazeli Monfared, and so many others. There, but for the grace of God, go I, over a bridge guide rail, off a hotel rooftop, thrown head first from the highest point, beheaded by family members.

This paper was made by Brian Borchardt, Lisa Beth Robinson, Caren Heft, and me in a glorious, though unbeknownst to us, pre-pandemic summer. Some was made by the same crew and others as we started shedding this pandemic. Most was made with the intension of being the substrate for “The Flying Men of Syria.” Now it transforms into a paper boat journeying down the Kenduskeag Stream, heading into Bangor.

The text type for this book is Poliphilus, initially cut by Francesco Griffo, circa 1499, for Aldus Manutius and redesigned by Stanley Morison for the Monotype Corporation in 1923. The body of this book was set at the Press and Letterfoundry of Michael and Winifred Bixler in 2021.

This book is in an edition of 50 and for gentle, angry people singing, singing for their lives.

Jeffrey Morin

sailorBOYpress

Milwaukee, Wisconsin