(Our) HISTORY (is Theirs), (Their) STORY (is Ours). For all refugees and those who seek asylum

04 Oct, 2024 by séamas carraher, global rights

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There is this thin line called

the corpus callosum.

It transects both the geography

and blind terror

of a displaced mind.

There is, also, Citizen,

this imaginary place

called East and West.

Here your patience must wait

for a future condemned

to be force-fed

on the futile fear of the mindless

mediated now between the meridians

of thought and thoughtlessness.

If you woke alone in

this no-man’s-land

it would hiss hatred

at your presence

like an angry snake

disturbed by its own

selfish sleep.

Here

we must all seek rest

somewhere between memory

and trauma

and the strange yet familiar

sound of screeching voices,

where nothing spoken will ever

make much sense.

Somehow here, mein Führer,

all our words are taken

hostage.

Our Being, already mute with the

chatter of speechlessness,

is now made unbearable with

the lobotomy of borders.

There is this thin surgical line

between North and South.

i tiptoe its intense unbalancing

at night

when the oligarchs and their

soldiers sleep and i am alone

in this godless catastrophe

called peace and war

and exile…

There is, also, a thin

armed line

between sanity and its sister

where a defeated people have

congregated like ants

in a crowd

aching for the next holocaust

for soon we will live

in a century

where they will suspend

all poets and preachers

from street-lights and the

television of crucifixions

like heretics once lit

with a bonfire of books.

Already i can hear the

whispering of the applause

while we watch helpless

as they burn our brothers and sisters

in these profane explosions

– their biblical and strategic

obscenities.

But between you and me, Lover

there is no thin blue line any more.

Now, there are only dreams of distance.

Your arms held out to this deep Diaspora

for the embrace of Light.

Left and Right now no more than directions in flight.

Every where i turn the people flee in boats.

They are crossing these imaginary lines

in our shipwrecked minds

destined now to death

by water.

We drown along-with-them in

newspapers and on screens filled

with the me-and-mine of our illusions,

a rhetoric of despair, the embrace

of sea or land or ocean no longer

even a destination.

Dead or alive, unwanted,

they are written

on the wind

as migrant or refugee,

both nameless and nonentity.

There are few beings who will survive

our western philanthropy.

Our own lungs can no longer breathe

with the cost of its crudity.

Its common-sense, its petty profit.

The poverty of our philosophies and lies.

Our greedy geography.

This is a story we will never dare tell

our grandchildren:

It has been sickening for 10,000 years.

In all this time a monstrosity

of madmen

have planted so many walls

the sailors’ maps became corpses

with staring eyes.

Our many directions subverted.

They have blurred all our beliefs

with borders and boundaries.

But see, all around you

as you slept, Neighbour

our world has now become

such an endlessness of

feet walking,

walking in search of safety

and a place called home.

Not a nation nor a tribe.

Not another lousy lesson by

a cruel schoolmaster

called history!

Not (yet) even: Humanity,

our Hurt, our Unfinished Story.

séamas carraher

15, september – 2 october 2024

*****

Reference – Video

“Inside the Protests” – Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE explores the growing protest in the country against refugees and asylum seekers, their manipulation by an ideology of hatred and exclusion, along with the Government’s inability to build relationships with local communities.

RTE Investigates – September 2024

IMAGE (“fair-use”)

The flight of Kurds from Afrin, NE.Syria (Rojava) following invasion by NATO member, Turkey and its armed Islamist militias

BBC – Afrin – January 2018

ANF English – September 2024

NOTES

Poets hanged: UN News 2022

UN rights experts condemn protestor’s execution,

Burnt Brothers & Sisters: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

CPJ – September 20, 2024

We drown along-with-them…

A dead child washed up on Turkish beach lays bare Europe’s migrant crisis

Image – September 2015

On a beach north of Marzamemi, Sicily commemorating the drowning of 16 migrants from Egypt and Palestine on the 27th October 2007

Image – October 2007

whispering of applause– Israeli citizen support for genocide? November 2023

“Poll results were also hawkish when it came to the use of force in Gaza:

57.5% of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza,

36.6% said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower,

while just 1.8% said they believed the IDF was using too much fire power,

while 4.2% said they weren’t sure whether it was using too much or too little firepower. “

TIME – November 2023

Our greedy geography.

UN report finds Israeli occupation of Palestine ‘indistinguishable from settler colonialism’

A United Nations report finds that Israeli occupation of Palestine is ‘indistinguishable from settler colonialism.’ The report also finds that the Israeli occupation is illegal and unlawful under international law.

Al Jazeera – October 2022

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe says that Israel is a settler colonial project which may be coming to an end. He warns that settler colonial projects reaching their last phase become more “brutal and ruthless”.

Middle East Eye – December 2023

“such an endlessness of

feet walking,”

UNHCR – Refugee Statistics (See Graphic, June 2024)