By: Dr. Adnan Buzan
Mother...
I was born...
with the cry of pain,
when the night was learning
the names of its victims,
and when the sighs were hiding their children
beneath the cloak of silence.
I was born...
in the arms of sorrow,
when time walked barefoot
over our wounds,
leaving at the doors of villages
names that could find no graves.
I was born...
with the moaning of the dark night,
with the sigh of stories,
when grandmothers
hid history within their breasts,
so that the notebooks of the victors
could not steal it.
I was born...
when summer
was stripping the last leaf from its tree,
scattering the dust of its yellow sorrow
across the roads,
as though autumn
were not a season,
but a destiny.
Mother...
I was born...
with the lie of history,
when they told us:
Cain was the murderer...
and Abel was innocent...
Then they closed the book
before telling us
who inherited Cain’s knife.
Since Adam...
the earth has been divided
in the names of gods,
and since Noah...
the flood has never ended;
whenever the waters recede,
another flood of words begins.
Mother...
I was born...
when the tears of Ararat
rolled from the mountain toward the sky,
when the mountain
was trying to say something,
and could find
nothing but silence.
Ararat...
O witness to my wounds...
You know that mountains can weep,
and that stone
may preserve what documents
are incapable of preserving.
I was born...
with a language stripped
of its letters,
a language from which
they tore away its name,
then asked:
Who are you?
And it answered with a long silence,
as though silence
were the last thing
that remained to it
of a homeland.
A barren language...
Whenever it carried a poem,
the borders
made it miscarry,
and whenever it gave birth to a song,
the jailer came
to search its throat
for a crime.
A language...
that burns each day
for a thousand years,
and whose ashes
become nothing
but more memory.
Mother...
I am not a statue,
standing in public squares,
so that the corrupt
may circle around me
during election seasons,
place wreaths of lies
around my neck,
and then sell my name
in the marketplace of slogans.
No...
I am not a stone,
so that they may carve my face
as they please,
nor am I a flag
they raise
whenever they need
a new shadow.
I am not a name on a sign,
nor a picture
on a party wall,
nor a grave
in need of a speaker.
Mother...
I am no one’s companion
when companionship
is merely a ladder to the chair of power,
nor anyone’s friend
when friendship becomes
the key to the country’s vaults,
nor anyone’s brother
when blood
is nothing more than a slogan.
And I am not the son
of a political father
orphaned of conscience,
nor a golden wrist
offered to a corrupt judge
so that justice
may be purchased
with a shining watch.
I am not a road
for the world
and the ignorant alike to pass over,
nor an old bridge,
broken in spirit,
across which caravans cross,
then forget
who carried their footsteps.
I...
am no one’s passage.
I am the mountain
when it refuses
to become a staircase.
I am the wound...
when it learns
how to become memory.
I am the voice...
that whenever they try
to bury it in the earth,
grows from the grave
into a poem.
I am Judi...
not because I survived the flood,
but because
I am still resisting the wind...
carrying upon my shoulders
a ship
that never reached its shore.
I am the last leaf
that has not yet fallen,
a solitary leaf
that learned from autumn
that falling
is not always the end.
I...
am a leaf...
fallen from the tree of longing,
still suspended
between earth and sky,
neither returning
to its branch
nor consenting
to become dust.
I am outside
the birth of history...
because I was not born
on the page written by the victors,
but in the margin
they tore away
and believed had died.
I am the son of the story
they never allowed
to be completed.
And when history asks me:
Who are you?
I will not say:
I am a victim.
Nor will I say:
I am a hero.
I will simply say:
I am the one who remained standing
when everyone else
had finished writing
the story of the fall.
I am the one who,
whenever they closed
the door of memory,
opened it
from the side of the wound.
And whenever they said:
The story is over...
I raised my head
and said:
It has not begun yet.
Mother...
If you ask
why I was born this way,
do not search for my name
in the birth records.
Search for me in the mountains,
in the songs
that survived the fire,
in the language
that remained
breathing beneath the rubble,
and in the eyes of a child
who looks toward his homeland
and does not know why
he is forbidden
to name it.
There...
I was born...
not in the womb of history
they wrote for us,
but outside its womb,
where those are born
who possess nothing
but their memory
with which to resist.
I am outside
the birth of history...
but perhaps...
I may be
one of those
who will write
its ending.