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Exile!
Have you ever seen a
nightingale apply for a permit to sing? Have you seen anyone
executing a bird because of its heavenly song?
Have you come across
a power so dark and so evil that it cannot tolerate the colour
of sunflowers and daffodils? A power so satanic that it wants to
burn and destroy all the angels, smearing their beautiful white
wings with blood?
Have you heard of a
place where the writers have their pens and their arms broken?
Some are even found dumped in some alleyway with a blue ring
printed around their necks or their throat cut. Imagine being a
poet living in a place like that. Imagine writing poems about
all that and not being tolerated by the powers that govern you.
Imagine going to university with a long black gown and a
headscarf that covers your sense of self, your womanhood, your
livelihood, your youth and beauty.
Imagine being
intimidated, kept in the background and classified as second
class citizen just because you are born a woman. When two
beautiful white doves on your chest are singing and your dark
flowing hair wants to feel the warmth of the sunshine. When you
have so much to say and have a voice as heavenly as the voice of
angels to sing, but the barbwire of silence is wrapped around
your neck suffocating all you have to say.
That is when you
decide to flee. You decide to fly all the way across the oceans
and mountains. Across the forests and deserts to find yourself a
new nest, where you can rest on a branch and sing freely.
You fly in the
lashing rain and against the violent wind that blows you
backwards. You fly in the scorching sunshine that brings your
brains to boil. You rest on the thorn bushes overnight and fly
again when the first ray of sunshine peeks from behind the
mountain.
Finally you get
there. All your colourful feathers faded and dirty, your red
beak now looking pale, your heart broken for all you have left
behind.
You find yourself a
nest on a strange tree. All the other birds are giving you
strange looks. You want to wake up and smell the flowers of your
native garden, but it all now seems like a vague dream. You
think: “Well, at least now I can sing freely”. You sing your
most beautiful song, but they all look at you strangely.
They don’t understand
your language! You fade into the background and become a part of
some sad lonely minority who can sing in a heavenly voice, “but
it all sounds like gobbledygook!” cries the bird on the next
tree.
This is living in
exile.
It can take you months
even years to find your voice in the new tongue. To be able to
say what is erupting in your heart like an angry volcano.
When you finally find
your voice, all you want to say is the stories of exile. To ask
people to listen to the voiceless birds of exile…
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