By Dr. Adnan Bozan

Do not build me a statue...
Do not raise for me a flag of deaf bronze.
Let my name seep like water
through the cracks of the earth,
and through the scent of bread
rising from the ovens of the poor.

Do not build me a statue.
I am not a stone smiling at passersby,
nor a signpost on a road
crossed by merchants of words.
I am the story of wheat
that never trembled
when the hand of drought bit into it.
I am the cry of a mother
who never tired of waiting at prison gates.
I am the wound of a homeland
that awakens, with every bullet,
the breath of old songs.

Do not build me a statue.
I still walk the alleyways,
shake the hands of your weary faces,
and sit in cafés
like the shadow of your stories yet unwritten.
I am the child
whose dreams you left at the edge of the sea
to return to your boats
without looking back.
And I am the one returning now,
with sails of patience
and ink drawn from blood,
to write what no one else dared to write.

Do not build me a statue.
Make my will a song
that travels from one throat to another.
Let my grave be the whole earth.
Every fruit-bearing tree on a mountainside
is my bones.
Every flower on the grave of an unknown mother
is my heart.
Every mud-brick house
built by your hands
is my true face.

Do not build me a statue.
I have not disappeared.
I am in every hand that plants,
and every hand that resists.
I am in the rain embracing the grass of the hills,
and in the wind stirring the myths of ancestors.
I am in the eagerness of a child
hanging his schoolbag,
dreaming to finish his lesson uninterrupted.
I am in the street
carrying your footsteps,
your dreams,
and your eternal question of a just tomorrow.

Do not build me a statue.
Do not erect for me a mausoleum
visited by politicians on speech anniversaries.
I want to be in hearts,
not in squares;
on children’s tongues,
not media platforms;
in the ink of writers,
not in museum marble.

I am the will of the absent who return,
and I am not absent.
I am the ember in your blood,
the carving of your silence,
the echo of your forgotten songs.
I remain in your wheat,
in the water of your wells,
in your faces that do not know defeat.
And if you seek my grave,
write upon the pavement of the homeland:

“Here no one died.
Here, life awakened
from every tear,
every cry,
and every word.”