The sudanese children in Cairo

Dear Friends,

We are all watching the news of the crowds of Egypt’s uprising or, some say, revolution. I came across a poem that I wrote five years ago when the Egyptian government was dealing with thousands of Sudanese refugees living in the parks and square of Cairo. Eventually the Egyptian authorities put them, despite their appeal for mercy, onto buses and shipped them back to the Sudan. Many of them were refugees and fearful for their lives.  So this situation in Egypt reminded me of Sudanese people’s aspirations for freedom. I would like to share this poem because the bottom line is that people’s lives are on the line. The voice of the people, be it Egyptian, Sudanese, Tunisian, Iranian and any other people’s cry for democracy and basic human rights, must be heard. I pray that God’s will to provide a peaceful resolution to this crisis will inspire the people in the streets and those in the government and the military as well.

Sudanese Children in Cairo

Black fists

Outstretched arms

Bare chests

Mother’s breasts

Children’s hearts

Old men’s bones

Defy life’s illusions

And the drumbeaters

Flying in desert winds

Sweeping and twisting limbs

And the stickmen who beat

The breath out of black skin.

Sudanese children sleep

Faces buried in the mud

Holding birthday candles

A doll

A baby’s blanket

And a suitcase.

As wild dogs howl amidst the cries and screams

Echoing in a Cairo park.

Slabs of human flesh

Heaped onto buses

Perspiration indistinguishable

From a plague of heartbreak

Infecting the breathing corpses

Transported to camps

As angels on high immune

To the black exhaust

Rising to the sky

From the exile below

While the righteous wait

Sheltered in armbands

And ID cards

Who shut their eyes

As the storm passes.

Silent tears lost I the desert

Anger executed

And death is the last rite

Wearing a headdress

Of royalty in the tribe

From the land of their fathers

Whose flute sings freedom’s

Song in a city park’s

Grave to the living dead

That tells tales of martyrdom

And God alone cried above the moonlight.