The Closing Plenary of the Annual Conference of the Association of Hispanists of the UK and Ireland (AHGBI) was presented by Dr Joanna Allan and Hamza Lakhal. Joanna explained the media representations of Saharawi women activists in Western Sahara and Hamza described his story and experience as a Saharawi poet and activist, and the role of poetry in their resistance in Western Sahara. The Saharawi people of Western Sahara, have been struggling to free their land from its occupation for four decades. Hamza rebels against the substandard situation in Western Sahara that lacks universities, entertainment, hospitals, and all the everyday requirements for normal life through the art of poetry. He uses poetic words as a peaceful tool to resist the colonization of his country. The conference closed with the below poetry reading:
SONGS FROM EXILE
You Will remain lonely
As you are.. single..!
The long nights harm
The sleepless eyes
And the wine remains
The only mate of drunkards
And you.. Lonely as you are..
Navigating the seas ..
Crossing cities..
And you come and go
As you always are.. Alone ..!
Perhaps the countryside
Is singing that resembles
The singing of nightingales..!
And you, so crazy
With the love of the homeland,
You also love the sand..
Love orchards..!
This is why you were amazed..
And protected your hands
When the creak of chains
Were too much to stand.
And you became lonely
While « Fairuz » sings for you
“The neighbor of the valley”
Singing it as a struggling memory.
Are you Still requesting
The end of darkness ..?!
While your shadow is still running
Behind the tents ..?!
How would you be able to sing
Morning lights’ songs,
While your heart is shouting:
“O! You Sleepers!?”
You are prisoner to the lust of travels..
And to the melodies of poetry
A cover or palms!
Women or deserts!
And the beautiful voice
A sad and bare sound
Is to you like an Achilles’ tendon
Thrown by exile’s lands …!
And you will remain lonely
As you already are alone ..!
From the winds you come
To the winds you walk
Stranger as a wandering grain of sand
In the wind you grow
And in the wind you suffer
Fugitive like a rhyme in a poem
And you ask for the land of « Saguia »
Asking the clouds about your land of love
« – Is my homeland’s dawn ahead?
Answer me so as I survive.
Answer me so as I heal
My country is my wounds…
My wounds are my country… »
But no one gives you answers.
Nor the clouds confessed.
Neither the morning came.
Neither questions healed your wounds
And there is no land for you
Your home is the wind ..
It is your exile .. /
Your shelter .. /
Your life .. /
Your trip .. /
Your return .. /
There is no land for you ..
Except for this mirage
No hugs for you ..
Except for the hugs of absence
Lonely like Odysseus you are
Struggling against nostalgia to the homeland
Struggling against the waves
Struggling against separation from your people
And deceit of comrades
And the curse of the Security Council of hypocrisy
Lonely …
Strange …
Displaced …
A fugitive …
No land for you
No .. And you don’t have rights
To live without torment
And without destruction.
Yet you’ll read a newspaper one day
And hear in another a resolution.
But what happened ..?!
From the wind you come
To the wind you walk
Stranger like a fugitive grain of sand.
Is it that you will remain alone
In the wind you grow
And in the wind you suffer
Fugitive like a rhyme in a poem
And what happened ..?!
From the wind you come
To the wind you walk
Is it really that you will remain lonely ..?!
In the wind you grow
With the wind you suffer..?!
And remain alone..?!
And suffer alone..?!
And suffer …
And remain …
Lonely ..
And suffer
And remain
Lonely As you are ..?!
Copyright © 2016. Hamza Lakhal
Translated from Arabic by Malainin Lakhal
All right reserved
Hamza Lakhal
