أطفالنا

Our Children

(To the children of the Intifada¹)

1. Our children, we have lost all feeling…
2. we have become the most cowardly of heroes whenever a raid is launched.
3. No, we are no longer the armoured champions, the conquerors.
4. Our forefathers, long ago, were conquerors.
5. But we, who came after them, betrayed² the trust,
6. and stooped to vileness, as low as men can stoop,
7. when one of us gave up his place
8. to the enemy… so they could make us taste disgrace;
9. and another followed, and gave up his place.
10. Then we said… Ah, how shameful treachery is!
11. They drove us out… they fought us… till we were like the starving.
12. They told us… You will not even take your goods away.
13. So we are the generation of disgrace, the ones who lost their way,
14. torn, after that abasement, by the fangs of beasts of prey.
15. We were ‘great’³ when the world lay behind the soles of our sandals,
16. then we became ‘bones’³, gnawed hollow by the worm.
17. And at our plight
18. kin and strangers alike have jeered,
19. now that we no longer resist,
20. chasing after beauties, or girls with swelling breasts,
21. until we had no one left to back us or assist.
22. We were… and we became…
23. How far apart are what we used to be
24. and what we have come to be!
25. We may claim that we have won,
26. without the faintest trace of shame,
27. but we have been defeated.
28. We are a disgrace even to cowards.
29. And so the peoples sang to us⁴:
30. “We have won… and we have won!”
31. In this world we are nothing but scattered dust.
32. Our children,
33. do not ask: What ails us, that we accept humiliation and abasement?
34. Your forefathers said it long ago…
35. and truthfulness was a trait in those forefathers, the very emblem of their pride.
36. It was us they meant when they said:
37. “Who once is abased finds abasement light⁵;
38. a dead man feels no pain from any wound.”
39. It is told of them that they worshipped God…
40. worshipped Him as He truly should be worshipped.
41. “Little of their dark nights did they spend in sleep⁶,
42. and in the glow of the hours before dawn they asked forgiveness.”
43. And by day they were galloping,
44. on horses racing to jihad… and speeding on,
45. speeding on… and chanting:
46. “Racing to God with no provision for the way⁷
47. but piety, and deeds for Resurrection Day,
48. and patience, for God's sake, in jihad's fray;
49. for every provision runs out one day,
50. except piety, righteousness and the guided way.”
51. And that is how they conquered kingdoms and lands.
52. Do not wonder at it: they were guides to the right path.
53. They sought neither worldly gain nor a life of corruption.
54. They answered the call of their God, the Lord of all His servants:
55. “Fight in the way of God, and you will be given eternal life.”⁸
56. Our children…
57. my charge to you is that you disown us.
58. Do not accept us as the ones who speak
59. for any single one of you, daughters or sons.
60. Our children… do not trust us.
61. We may yet hand the homelands over, inch after inch,
62. surrendering the land we should guard, since money and oil are brimming over,
63. mouthing boasts that ours are the glories and the honour,
64. while glory walks away, jeering, disowning us and scoffing.
65. Our children…
66. Here we are… here are our failings, and here our vices.
67. So do not hope for what can never be.
68. You children are the ones to whom the cause belongs.
69. So make them taste a punishment for all to see,
70. till, under the volley of the holy stone, they cannot tell
71. the south from the north.
72. A fury against the enemy
73. that hurls a flame for the truth from the lava of the slings⁹.
74. So make it blaze more fiercely.
75. Teach us: how is glory built?
76. How has the spark of the anger you set off
77. levelled mountains on the foe?
78. And mock us, for we have been nothing but a bane.
79. Write history with stones, on pages that are new.
80. God knows, and has since you first came to be, that you are always His soldiers.
81. Make Begin¹⁰ a gift of a volley that splits stubborn skulls,
82. and more stones for Shamir, to make his madness grow,
83. and more stones for Rabin, to split open his brow,
84. while his deluded soldiers follow where he goes;
85. a stone for hateful Zion, that you throw.
86. So that when, over there, they ask
87. any of them who fled and got away:
88. “Who was it, then, that put you to shame?”
89. they will answer them:
90. “The children of Gaza and Hebron¹¹…
91. the children of Jaffa and Galilee…
92. the children of every city and every camp…
93. in glorious Palestine.”

Mogadishu, 3 December 1987

English translation prepared by artificial intelligence and reviewed against the Arabic for accuracy of meaning and rhetoric.