We, in the land of expatriation
Just like dandelion seeds
Have bid our motherland farewell, when her veins could no longer
bleed
Scattered by the gale, trampled and crushed by the trials of time
But as they say back home, "Akl Al A'aish Jabbar"
We don't join the chants on independence days, "what has
mother done for us ?"
We whisper in shame ,having fled the ship before it sunk
We, in the land of expatriation, spend our youth looking for a
place to belong
Those who have wandered for long, realize, quite languid and old
That a homeland, unlike a plot of earth, cannot be bought
with silver and gold
That acting like Romans while in Rome did not eventually make them
Romans
And for years, while drenched in drudgery, longing seeps from their
skin
Mixes with their sweat, drips across their temples
That old man with sunken eyes, silken gowns and apparent wealth?
Must have spent his youth collecting dimes in a trunk of patience
Dug in another man's junk and took what's usable
Kissed shoes and committed many a crime he found excusable
Only carried through with the thought of his mother in his heart
Her scent as she embraced him at the door
"Ya Waladi Lalob Baladna Wala Tamr Alnas"
You were right, mother, we were poor when we left,
But we're back, much poorer
Mother, we have docked our Dhows at your shore to spend our old age
Threw our heavy sacks of fortune on your dry soil
But mother, we are still expats at home
Our stranger children, our abandoned brothers, their faces recounting
stories of toil
Meet us at the door with packed cases, and the ones that remained behind,
stand in line
To collect the dues that they think we owe them
Back home, we are the bad seed with an alien culture, the
enlightened breed
That tramples on the norms, and makes amends that no one asked for
Lo, for a reason obscure we so believe that our heaven on earth lies
beyond the borders
Far away, where we can't remember the smell of the sprinkled clay
of the Hoash
The petrichor after a drizzle, washing the sky, and the ashen faces
of the homeless
Filling the cracks on their palms,
Stretched to the windows of foreign cars at the signal stop, begging
for alms
Far away where we can't hear the grunts of helpless fathers, the coos
of careworn wives
The squeals of abandoned foundlings, the sighs of Settat Al Shai
Somewhere beneath a void trunk of Tabaldi, in a barren outskirt of Tangasi
One of us dug their tomb, and tucked their heart in, while Mother
wept bitterly
A resentful existence that devoured her children, trying to get
them back inside her womb.
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