I AM A REFUGEE

My apologies, Sir,
That I come to you
As a refugee.
Accept me as a human
being and not
As a slave.
Do not look down on
me;
Do not look me up and
down.
I am a poet;
My testimonies plaster
the walls,
And people far and
wide recite my poems.
Will you accept me
among you
As a refugee?
They destroyed my
poems, along with the
walls they hung upon;
When they torched the
verses, I burned with
them.
They broke my mind;
They robbed my
thoughts;
They stripped our
insides.
Will you accept me
among you
As a refugee?
Sir, you do not
understand me,
And I do not understand
you;
I am an Arab, and you a
foreigner,
But we will speak
through hand gestures.
Will you accept me
among you
As a refugee?

In my country
There is only hell, no
heaven.
They made me forget all
words
In all languages.
We have forgotten how
to understand words
And one another.
Will you accept me
among you
As a refugee?
Who and what I am . . .
Youre asking who and
what I am?
I am without a past,
Without a present,
Without a face;
I am a remnant of a
person.
Will you accept me
among you
As a refugee?
In al-Zaatari they killed
us,
Buried us alive in the
sand;
Our women now whore,
While we pimp.
Will you accept me
among you
As a refugee?
In Lebanon they
stabbed us in the back.
They bought and sold
us;
They cast us aside,
naked;
They abandoned us,
starved.
Will you accept me
among you
As a refugee?

I knocked on Arab
doors
The sheikhs, the emirs
and the kings
All chased me away;
I came to you.
Will you accept me
among you
As a refugee?
My daughters in exile
disowned me
In my eighties.
They fought against me;
I have no one left but
you.
Will you accept me
among you
As a refugee?
My family, my
daughters, my kin,
All of them sold me out;
They pilfered my life
and forgot me;
They uprooted me and
left me to wither at the
embassy gates.
Foreigner, will you
accept me
As a refugee?
Wretched are the joy
And servility of
thanking ones masters,
And the fools of my
nation,
And my daughters,
And the criminals who
drove me away,
And burned down my
home.
I have fled their tyranny
To become a refugee
among you