"My People"
"We live an exciting life. Every day is an adventure, every breath a miracle."
There, on a land, we were told, was not our land,
under a sky, we were told, was not our sky,
my people live their death.
We don’t know how we got here,
and there’s nowhere else to go.
At the peak of despair,
we implore the gods
of diaspora:
Help us understand this dilemma, we say.
We don’t want to hurt the desert’s feelings
or disturb the mountain’s peace,
and the city walls are high and many.
Where to go, then?
In a garden—not the most beautiful garden,
and who knows whether ours or not,
no trees, no fruit, no birds nesting
in the ruins of our souls,
—we found ourselves one day.
Our garden, we said.
We dug our burrows with needles
and hid from the scorching sun
in the shade of distant memories,
the memories of life—we were also told—was not ours.
We did not come from a place or a direction.
We fell like the dust of a dying star,
a mere cosmic coincidence,
the sun aligning with the star of despair.
We have no idea what was in the beginning
nor what will be at the end.
We remember nothing except that
we are here,
sharing a dried-up loaf of bread,
a dried-up world,
and the tears of dried-up rivers
and mothers.
We have no color
—and all the colors are ours—
no hardened features,
no language,
no launching point,
no final direction.
In every airport on this planet,
one of us describes to a stranger
the malady of our existence on this earth.
We live an exciting life.
Every day is an adventure,
every breath a miracle.
And when we die, finally,
we die a lot.
Bored of displacement,
terrified of diaspora,
our doom is enough racket
for another exciting day
in the bosom of the sky.
No god promised us anything,
and the books neglected our names.
We were left to chase ghosts that chase us
to an elevator, out of order,
ascending to the skies.
My people write the names of their children
on arms and legs, so they can find them
later in the massacres.
They cast their gazes far into the fields.
They touch every screaming rock along the way,
every impossible branch,
hoping for a sign or a sound,
a song or a prayer,
to reunite them in the same darkness.
translated from the Arabic by Hude K. Fakhreddine
WV Holler links: https://linktr.ee/hollerwestvirginia