Salli would like her legs back to restore her Mother’s happiness. She knows her mother’s sadness, which somehow escapes the proponents of her tragedy. However, Salli is aware she has no legs, a plight she shares with many others who are as yet unaware.

For instance the pilot of the jet fighter who dropped the missiles on Salli, her family, her home and neighborhood; he flew back to his air base, changed into a freshly laundered set of fatigues and after a year or so of these “missions” returned to a town in America, likely to a family of his own. He’s proud, perhaps a little sad or angry or disillusioned, etc, etc, but unaware that he has no legs.

The awareness might come during one of his kids’ birthday parties, or an event at their school, or perhaps a family tragedy, a look in his child’s eyes or the no-look in his own that he notices in the mirror one morning, causing him to finally look down and realize he has no legs. He won’t end up under a bridge like the grunts on the ground below him who put their rounds into people they could see and who will be forever haunted, but no legs is still a problem.

Then there are the men and women who found Salli in a pool of blood with her body blown apart and dismembered. They have no legs. They lost them when they saw Salli. And of course the doctors and nurses who worked on Salli, their legs are gone, every day, over and over.

Sallis’ mother, who once carried Salli and her brother in her embryonic sea, warm and safe; she birthed them into the world when her womb could no longer contain their growth and she hoped and prayed the world would nurture them as she had, but you know the story now – no legs.

The reporter, Ali ad Fadhily, who had the courage to write the story of the hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands like Salli; his legs are long gone in the rubble, the chaos, the grief.

Far away, in a distant country, people who were convinced by an act of violence their intelligence could not, would not see beyond, to send the pilot seeking retribution, or at least that’s the copy read by the lead salesman for the war, people who couldn’t bear the sight of Salli nor would ever hurt her directly, lots and lots of these people have no legs.

They’ve lost a few children too and with children and legs there’s no counting, for if one or two are all you’ve got, when they’re gone you’ve lost them all. The shadow of no legs is growing around them despite the salesmen and posturing and the fluttering flag that once meant so much and now means no legs, no legs all the way down.

The only person in this story who has any legs left is Salli. Not the two graceful ones with the tiny shoes and delicate socks her Mom had given her, but a different kind of support she feels in her heart when she closes her eyes and looks beyond what is gone.

Lots of people want to awaken from this story though most won’t look down for the shame they’ll feel when they see what is lost. The salesmen continue to advocate no legs are important for democracy and no legs are crucial to stopping more no legs or the proud to have no legs bumper stickers and the support no legs car magnets.

There are a whole class of salesmen who say they are for God, who say this world is about no legs, that no legs are the punishment for not being good enough, born wrong or with the wrong religion, that no legs makes God happy even though it must have taken a long time for God to figure out how to make something so beautiful as Salli’s legs. These salesmen have been going on for a long time and their stories really need cleaning up, which is what this story is about, about dissolving the shame and unworthiness that keeps the salesmen busy and the rest of us in denial.

In the upside down world of no legs it is no legs all the way down but in Salli’s eyes and maybe one day in her mother’s and the pilot’s and the people who found Salli and the reporter and your eyes and mine, it’s about the courage to look down and feel all the feelings and to know that though it appears one way looking down, for Salli and for us all, the truth is about forgiveness and healing all the way up.