The keys to our dreams by Tarek Mehanna (In the Name of Allah) I walked by our dream and was saddened to find Tears filling her eyes with a look quite resigned. She sat in the jail where we left her behind Trapped behind the bars of a colonized mind. I stood and wondered how I could set her free So I asked if she knew where they’d hidden the key. She wiped away tears and looked over at me With pity that I assumed it would be so easy! She said: “Buried inside pages of distant past With a heritage of lions, so rich and so vast You’ll find the key with Sumayyah, when to faith she held fast As they speared her chastity, and she breathed her last. And it’s the finger of Bilal, the heroic black slave, The sign of Tawhid that in their faces he’d wave As he lay tied down in a hot desert grave Their harming of him made him all the more brave. And it’s the pledge of ‘Ikrimah, enemy turned warrior Who changed his life to make the truth superior. Khalid himself could not hold him back from more When his pledge at Yarmuk left the Romans so sore. It is the back with shredded flesh and torn skin Of Ahmad bin Hambal, who refused to give in. He answered their whips with the truth and a grin To protect our religion, he would not let them win. And it is the bittersweet dust of the land of Hittin, That once engulfed the knights of Salah ad-Din From the filth of dishonor, he made that dust clean And for the respect of the world did he set the scene. It was the rope around the neck of the desert’s lion ‘Umar Mukhatar, who would bow down to no Italian. Refusing to live in a state of humiliation His chin high to the end, with no fear of the Creation. The rope was passed on to Sayyid’s waiting head With one last chance for him to be spared from this dread. And from the choicest fruits, they promised he would be fed But his index finger led him to another door instead. The same finger that pointed up as Malcolm X lay still Ending a life of honor, that was one struggle uphill. He left a life of crime, transforming himself until He spoke bitter truth with eloquence and skill…” She sat in the jail where we left her behind Indeed this key will be difficult to find But it is you if you refuse to be blind And decide to free yourself from the colonized mind. Poem written by Tarek Mehanna 27th of Dhu al-Hijjah 1430 (14th of December 2009) In the hours before Fajr; in the traces of the pale floodlights shining into my cell. Plymouth County Correctional Facility, Isolation Unit.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 07:45:21 +0000
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