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NOBODY'S PERFECT - sample texts A Dream : Michael Mokako Sunday 11 March 2001 : Andy Hyka Home or Away? : Dahir, Dorcas, Olivier and Susan Hereafter : Soleïman Adel Guémar (From) Swansea Collage 2 composed by Sylvie Hoffmann Progress and True Progress : Maxson Sahr Kpakio This, or the Deluge...! : Abdalla Bashir-Khairi (Three of) Eight Poems : Soleïman Adel Guémar (One of) Two Poems : Aimé Kongolo
A Dream Michael Mokako This poem was written soon after Michael and his family learned that their asylum application had been refused. They are now waiting to hear whether their appeal has been successful. We dream our worry Our wish which will be reality soon
May those without hope find welcome here May those without hope of success be able to succeed
Welcome to the will that will be act soon Welcome to the hands on the edge of taking me through Welcome to the community longing to understand
May our seeking be found May our dreams and hopes find hospitality
Home or Away? Dahir, Dorcas, Olivier and Susan
I want to stay here because I like this school. I want to go home because my friends are there. I want to stay here because I can see things I couldn’t see in my old life. I never saw the sea until I came here. I want to go home because I like the teachers. I want to stay here because there are buses to take you to London, Birmingham or Cardiff. Buses don’t go that far at home. I want to stay here so that in the summer I will be able to go to the beach. I want to go home to see my father. I want to stay here. I want to go home.
Sunday 11 March 2001 Andy Hyka On that day in Macedonia the police were knocking everybody’s door because said a lie at the police the police saying to everybody who was saying a lie and somebody told a lie and they said like it was us they he said search the house but it wasn’t us it was somebody else so the police came and knocked and knocked our door and I ran into the house because I was playing in the front door with my Grompa but they got my Grompa and hit him and and they hanged him up.
Hereafter Soleïman Adel Guémar translation: Tom Cheesman It’s weird, but I wasn’t even scared for a second when they came! I heard their hesitant steps on the dark corridor outside and I knew that this time, it was me they were coming for. They were walking quietly so as not to wake the others. I think it’s mainly because of the rules that they do that. Whenever an inmate managed to shout out as they came to get him, they gagged him and dragged him down to the underground court at the double. I’d only just hear his last muffled screams, my ear pressed against the door, holding my breath. I wasn’t left waiting long – no more than three months, I think. I’d got used to my cell and the nauseating smells that came from the tiny hole I used for a toilet. There’d have been no point complaining. Nobody’d have listened. But in spite of everything, I was very lucky! Some ended up going totally crazy, waiting for long years on end for that fateful dawn. Me, I passed my time thinking of Samia and the sea. I was determ-ined to be healthy in body and mind at the execution. After all, it was my execution, the only one I was ever going to have! They were all very kind. The public prosecutor offered me a cigarette. I smoked it down to the filter. I knew I’d not be dragging on another for a while. Then the imam came to ask me to recite the chahada. He looked serious and fiddled nervously with a handsome set of green beads. As soon as he’d finished with me, two mastodons crashed me backwards against an upright girder set in the ground and tied me to it with a rope that smelled of burning. The soldiers in the platoon lifted their weapons – not very tidily – and fired! The mastodons fell, struck down. One bullet went through my thigh, another lodged in my stomach and a third did for my left eye. I was mad with joy. None had hit my heart. Not one. I was going to point this out to them, but some imbecile came and finished me off with a bullet in my neck. So I decided to keep quiet. The next day, it was raining torrents when I saw the imam again, in the cemetery. He was wearing a black raincoat over his white gandoura. I recognised him straight away. My cousin Mourad was sticking close to him. I still owed Mourad money. I was glad to see that he’d come to my funeral. I knew it wouldn’t be like him to begrudge me so little. He had shaved his moustache and was wearing my handsomest suit. Practically all of them were there: Baba-Sliman’s son-in-law Boualem, the country guard’s son Kadour, Samia’s father Si Larbi. Even Kaci-Tampouce, whose bicycle I’d stolen when we were kids, was there. I had tears in my right eye to see them weeping for me so sincerely and turning back every ten yards while walking away, at the risk of cricking their necks. But what bad luck ultimately! I feel so sad I could die. Nobody talks here. They all act like they’re dead and buried.
from Swansea Collage 2 Composed by Sylvie Hoffmann Based on conversations with asylum seekers, most of them from French-speaking African countries
Section 55: The friend’s story
A young mother with baby Stealing nappies. The welfare state turns a blind eye.
Section 55: The daughter’s story
I’m 18 years old. I live on the buses Just to keep going.
Section 55: The parents’ story
Our eldest daughter taken away from us! Kept behind in London, no money, no food, nowhere To live, on her own, to be caught and sent back to be Torn and abused by the military. And yet they know! Themselves, the British, they’re Shitting themselves to get out of the embassy. We want her with us We want her safe We want her well We want to care for her We are not given the freedom to love our own daughter.
Insomnia Denounced – persecuted – exiled – dispersed – Refused – sectioned – certified – Now, how shall we proceed?
The M.P.’s surgery: interpretation – What does she want me to write? – Tell him I found no solicitor to take up my case. Tell him where do I need to look? Tell him I cannot pay for one myself. Tell him I’m scared, my baby is babbling but I am scared. – What does she want me to write?
The G.P.
This G.P., he won’t examine me. He examines my clothes instead, He refuses to touch me. He won’t use Language Line. He refuses to believe me. He says I’m telling lies, he says I’m fine. He gives me Prozac, a stronger dose each time. It’s destroying me, I cannot sleep.
They are the mad ones, not me.
Still in Swansea? Yes, I’m still in Swansea. Even when you’re destitute You don’t shit in the saucepan that you use to cook your food.
Progress and True Progress Maxson Sahr Kpakio * Dedicated to all Asylum Seekers and Refugees around the Globe: don’t give up, but let the sky be your limit. There are still more good people than bad people in the world. When I think of one kind act that I did today, or someone did to me today, however small, I know I am moving forward. The power to change my life lies in my own mind. I choose to let go of self-defeating attitudes and replace them with positive thoughts. Every moment, I am becoming more loving, more considerate, more generous, and more filled with positive thoughts. I commit myself to the practice of quieting my mind and reflecting in silence, bringing myself closer to my soul and my highest potential. There is nothing I cannot do if I put my mind to it. The future awaits my dreams and the blueprint for success that I now create with my positive thoughts, even taking into consideration the very new environment that I find myself in. Sometimes, because of people’s attitudes towards me in this new environment, certain things try to hold me back; I then stumble, stop and re-think. I measure my success by measuring how much I love, not how many things I acquire. I try my best to be kind and gentle in every situation. I try to disprove people’s beliefs about me by telling them that I am not what they think or hear about me. I no longer filter everything through anger, but let old resentments go and move into a brighter state of mind. I improve the quality of my life with every positive thought. What I begin to practice now will become second nature. The dreams I envision are unfolding every moment. Every forward step I have made in my life gives me confidence in myself. I take the time to appreciate how far I have come despite all the negative thoughts about me in my new home. I know that I am moving forward because I don’t sweat over the small stuff, and I am able to handle the big stuff with grace and dignity, even the acts of racism, hate, and prejudice. I expand my perspective and my capacity for understanding every day, always taking the time to see good things in everyone. But do they do the same? Each morning, I vow to approach everything with an open heart. I handle problems more easily than I did a month ago, a year ago, a decade ago, because I am committed to becoming the best person I can be. I choose to envision only peace, harmony, and kindness. I take time to acknowledge the still, quiet place within me and draw strength, compassion, and wisdom from it. I have abundant enthusiasm for life, in this part of the world that I am in today, and look forward to each new day. Yesterday is just a vanishing thought. Today I have the opportunity to start fresh and create miracles. I realize that I am here for a brief moment, and I try to make the best of each day. Every day, I find a way to contribute something, no matter how small, to the goodness of the world, and particularly the community in which I live today. I no longer force things to go my way, but instead, gently allow my inner knowledge to direct me. My old habit of controlling every second of my life is a thing of the past. The stress I have accumulated in my life is fading away with each breath. During stressful times, I let go of the habit of complaining. My new thinking allows me to laugh at myself when I stumble; to brush myself off, and to move forward with renewed energy. There are no obstacles I cannot overcome with my inner resources, and I take the time to pause and reflect on the outstanding results I have achieved with my positive thoughts and inner wisdom. I measure my progress by how calm and peaceful I remain when someone keeps me waiting, waiting, and waiting to hear about a final decision concerning my status in life; or when I lose something; or when someone abuses me for no reason, when someone keeps me waiting to be served, or when someone dashes my change, my cash, into my palm, as if my hands were too dirty to be touched. Yes, I still try to measure my progress by how calm and peaceful I remain when someone looks in my face and tells me “go home where you come from”, when someone betrays my interests and lets me down, when someone walks away from my life for no reason, or when I make a clumsy mistake. When any of these things occurs, I recall how I reacted to the same situation a year ago and congratulate myself on my progress, my true progress.
* Note Maxson Sahr Kpakio acknowledges the use of texts by Richard Carlson and Christopher Cox in his “Progress and True Progress”.
This, or the Deluge...! Abdalla Bashir-Khairi translation: Ibrahim Gafar and Tom Cheesman Suddenly that evening, as I was beginning to turn my steps towards the far corner of the vast square at the centre of the city, I felt a constriction in my chest and an unusual commotion. Before I could complete my quick turn to face the other side of the square, I found myself in their hands. The sun was bidding farewell to the quarters of the square; dusk was dragging the sun’s golden tails in a slow and leisurely retreat towards its hidden sleeping-place, behind the distant horizon, beyond the Nile. I could no longer see the radiant faces and white robes of those who had committed themselves to beautifying the city streets with the roses and flowers of the New Thinking. I bade the city and them farewell in my thoughts and feelings. Since then I have seen neither it nor them. It was as if celestial carriages drawn by winged horses had transported them all, that evening, to invisible heavens – or so I consoled myself. They severed the thread of my contemplation and bundled me into a Landrover, then deliberately confused my senses by taking a long, roundabout and zigzag route. At one moment we seemed to be passing over a river. I felt a whiff of a soothing draught of air waft over me, refreshing hope within me, despite the tight blindfold. The car stopped several times. Various exchanges took place between those inside it and others, all in the form of codes and riddles. Finally we stopped at what seemed to be the destination. I was dragged along a long, damp hallway, half-walking, almost suffocating, roughly shoved, stumbling, until at last I arrived in a kind of circular room at the end of the hallway. There I was stripped of all of my clothes, cruelly beaten, flesh and bone, and I suffered – momentarily – humiliation. This was followed by hours of interrogation inside that damp room smelling of betrayal. The face interrogating me was so sadistic that it seemed visibly to thrive on the sight of me twisting and convulsing under the whips of pain. It was as if that character had sprouted like a fungus from spores of professional crime and vileness. Or it seemed as though he was extracting from my flesh and my soul the price of an old vendetta, or exacting revenge for blood that had been shed unknown to me. It was a face absolutely isolated from any current of mercy and all that belongs with it: a maliciously ugly face, oozing with insult and the will to injure everything innocent. They want to wrest a confession out of me? A confession of what? Of a conspiracy which they suspect? He handed me an exercise book and a pen, and with a glare which gathered all the menace of the world, in a coarse voice, home to all of cruelty’s parasites, he said: “I want this back tomorrow morning, full of the names of all who were with you and with all the details of the conspiracy! No need for you to deny your knowledge of anything, our sources have left us in no doubt.” He gave me a meaningful look as he shut the door behind himself: “Do what we ask of you, and we’ll make you a prosecuting witness.” Rage possessed me and I shouted at him: “Some of us have met their Maker under your filthy hands, but those who still have that to come still do as they please under the sun and under the moon. Didn’t you arrest us from a square at the heart of the city?” My voice was lost to the wind and air: already he had locked the door behind him, slipping out without hearing me. I picked up the exercise book which he had left. But the pen had fallen and rolled away. I crawled towards it, exhausted to the extreme. My fingers groped their way towards it over the damp floor. When I was satisfied that my hand held the pen, as far as my worn-out strength permitted I straightened up, hugged the exercise book and pen to me and breathed the sweet repose of the enchanted passion of two intimate companions in an oasis in a desert of nothingness. I put the exercise book down on the ground and bent over it to write. My eyes were now used to the semi-darkness hovering over that place. Of which enough. As I was immersed in writing, the door was half-opened. I didn’t raise my face, but I heard him say: “We were sure you’d act like a rational, intelligent man.” He closed the door behind him and disappeared, adding: “Keep on writing, and don’t forget you’ll be a key witness.” The sound of the door closing synchronised with a strange relaxation in my exhausted memory. I remembered how, when I was being beaten and kicked, I had rolled myself up and completely surrendered to the experience moment by moment. Exactly in that position I relived, in an enlightened and vivid way, the events of our historic procession, the White Procession which reclaimed the long road from Al-Mahdiyya to Sharfi Graveyard. I had been lucidly alive with the White Procession as it turned, following the road to the left to head past the Northern Police Station, and on towards Martyrs’ Square at the heart of the city. The men were wearing white jallabiyyas and bright turbans, and the women were wearing white dresses. The procession was radiant, peaceful and wonderful. I particularly recollected how all of us, men and women, white-haired elderly and children, sat on the ground, when obstructed by the police, in a composed, reverent and sober manner, each person in his own place. I rolled myself up more in an attempt to protect my sensitive organs from the humiliating, damaging kicking. The remembrance continued, alive and vivid. People gathered around us and on the rooftops of the houses, women and men astonished at our bright whiteness seeping down towards the square. So we poured on, a silent flow, from the left of Mahatma Gandhi Junction, into Nile Street, and under the eves of the Sudan Broadcasting Corporation building, where we were grievously shocked to see them giving a very old man an excruciating beating. From there the procession headed through Khalifa’s Square, to the court where the judges sat in a row, empty-hearted, holding their noses high, haughtily strangling themselves with their neck-ties, like some satanic beings which have emerged from a dark cosmic hole. I cannot now remember anything further than that, and I no longer have the strength to continue this narration, for the mere act of evoking memories wears me out, and the remains of the candle’s glimpses inside myself drip and fuse into a formless whole before, finally, being extinguished! It doesn’t matter. I am, inevitably, dying now. In just a few moments I will be irrevocably deceased, and my soul will have what is arguably the good fortune to observe the last stages of the hidden crime in my poor visible body lying on the ground, motionless. Of course, my oppressor will be back for the exercise book, expecting to break the pen after forcing me to sign my name. But when he sees me a lifeless corpse, he’ll be struck dumb, and his disappointment will rise as he understands that the exercise book is only an empty pad of pages eying him sarcastically. . . .
Note “This, or the Deluge...!” describes the “White Procession” in Khartoum in 1985, a peaceful protest organised by the non-violent democratic movement known as the Republican Brothers (the members and leadership included many women). The Republican Brothers were inspired by “Africa’s Ghandi”, Al-Ustaz Mahmoud Taha, whose arrest, trial and execution for ‘apostasy’ in 1985 was triggered by his pamphlet “Hatha Aow Al-Tawafan” – “This, or the Deluge”. See www.alfikra.org. (TC)
Three of Eight Poems Soleïman Adel Guémar translation: Tom Cheesman
Interrogatory back to the wall I watch my life pass by and my eyes are black holes where light disappears
this inhuman stink rises it contaminates my torturers and the whole world each time I fall head first from the top of the metal ladder my groans are silent
my body inert still recalls the scent of flowers and gorgeous sunsets
I want to die like this to die on them ultimate escape assault on the troops’ morale to be buried beneath X or in a common ditch to be able to dream at last in peace
A dream
the storks have come back to make their nests on the highest rooftops the wind is rising over the blue lake rocking the motorboat and the orphan is signaling to you from the shore through the swirl of dead leaves the naked trees are stretching their arms up into the sky which is watching you smiling at last
Exile 1 my country gives off a scent which calls you by your first name the moment you turn your back
your heart squeezes as at your first embrace 2 having come back from so far if you ever can’t find the way here to us stop and contemplate the mountains you think you know
ask passers-by why the fountain’s dry where these paths go that drop into exhausted commas
if ever you come back from as far as my daring takes me we’ll walk together one day maybe beside precipices 3 my lunar memory has woven flying carpets
The grief of war – Le chagrin de la guerre Aimé Kongolo translation: Sylvie Hoffmann and Tom Cheesman
Pagaille, confusion et impudique guerre mauvaise. Ô, guerre mauvaise!
Shambles, confusion and shameless, vile war. O, vile war! Where is my father? O, family of vipers! Where are the innocents? You took them with no pledges.
Why are you so senseless? You who plant them, the innocents, in a garden of death – Why did you make me so wretched? You’ve taken them on an eternal journey Without looking back Knowing that each child’s life is a search for the father.
When will your raging hunger be satisfied? Even the new-borns, you come and take them constantly. Accursed be you who call us to that feast – You killer of innocents.
O war, where have you taken them? You have left me only grief. Where did you lead them? Bring them back once more onto this long path, Onto the human road along which we carry our sufferings, Our tiredness and our hunger each without end.
Woe to the warriors who ruin our fates. Despite the bombardments, the earthquake, We walked after we had suffered. Bring them onto this unsure road where we suffer unwillingly And where there is jealousy, envy, hatred and despair, Despair which makes us unable to live, unable.
You who inhibit the innocents in living – You who inhibit them as they walk on this unsure road – On this path through a pitiless universe of brutal conflict – Stabs in the back too common, innocent passers-by too easy prey, And all one breathes and all one sees is only pain, grief And blood upon human blood.
Et tout ce qu’on respire et qu’on voit n’est que douleur, chagrin Et les sangs humains.
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