Yamam Nabeel

Let us walk. I doesn’t matter in which direction, it doesn’t matter how fast. Let us walk and keep on walking until we find a place that doesn’t feel so strange. Where we are no longer the outsiders, where our smiles do not cause alarm.

This is not my choice, this wasn’t my decision, but please do not stop. Do not look back; we have left nothing behind. We were invisible until they painted over us and labelled us with words we never understood. 

Just walk, and keep singing, softly - so they can’t hear - the songs of our futile freedom.

• A Minute in Exile (03 February 2020)

It’s no longer me; it’s just a hologram made of the shadows I have left behind. It’s no longer my voice; just an echo of the last song I sang when I was as real as this illusion is now.

I’m no longer real, I’m no longer relevant; my world no longer matters. But I linger still, between worlds - between your dreams and mine; between the past you can not change and the present you can no longer control.

I am a witness; watching silently - and painfully helplessly- everything I had fought hard to protect you from.

• A Minute in Exile (16/01/2020)

You banned my words, you forbade my song, you chained my dreams and  yet I’m dancing in the rain, drinking the raindrops soaked in your lies.

You’re too blind to the illusion of your power, you’re living a delusion of your own grandeur. 

I’m dancing, I’m singing and writing a story made of all the dreams you tried to steal and in there you sit on a throne made from the rotting flesh of all those who applauded your lies.

• A Minute in Exile (31/12/2019)

It was a long journey, but you made it seem like a game we were never going to lose. You hid the truth with your tears, hid your tears with your smile and shielded me from harm with your arms. But truth has come and taken you away, and I’m here now reading the stories you didn’t want me to read. You are still here, trying to protect me from all that wanted to stop us from finding our way back. 

With each words I read my steps near closer to home, the home you had left behind to give me life; I life I did not say thanks for.

I watched you take your last steps and when you disappeared into the darkness, I shed my first tear and in that tear I saw everything you had given up for me. 

I promise to find my way home to the family so I can tell them your story of survival.

• A minute in exile (26/12/2019)

I am my father, I am my mother. 

I am my sisters and brothers; I am the neighbours who wish us a good morning. 

I am everyone we left behind, I am the family I was not afforded the time to be part of.

I am all my grandfather’s stories he didn’t get to tell; I am all my grandmother’s songs she never got to sing.

I am walking on a road that has no signs, no beginning but an inevitable and undesired end. 

And I’m walking slowly with a look only children of the exile have; fearless and hopelessly hopeful until my last breath!

• A minute in exile (21/11/2019)

I was a traveller; young and full of delusions. I kissed my mother goodbye and promised to come back in time for her to sing me a lullaby.

I am no longer a traveller, I am no longer young, the years have passed me by and even the delusions wised up.

I’m a stranger in a strange land, standing against the wind, singing a lullaby hoping the wind would take it back to the grave of my mother.

“I’m sorry I did not come back”, I whisper. “I’m sorry I lied to you mama”. And the tears no longer ease the pain. “Mama I’m sorry you didn’t get to see your son grow up to be a man.”

And I’m now standing here - between all the strangers in this strange land - waiting for death to take me away from this eternal exile and return me to the sweet embrace of my mother. 

“Forgive me mama. I pretended that I had never left your side.”

• A minute in exile  (13/11/2019)

These were the days we saved as memories to return to when we reached the age of our parents. 

These were the songs we memorised so we could sing them as lullabies to our own children.

These were the tears we kept to remind us of all that would be gone once we called ourselves grown ups.

But we never grew up, we never had the chance to. We just watched time as it passed us by without stopping to even take a look at who we were.

And we stood there looking at our misfortune or perhaps our fateful luck to be the witnesses to this world we could never call ours.

• A minute in exile (08/11/2019)

Was it all in vain? Was it just a wasted life on a dream that never really existed? I walked all this way, called it the journey of my life only to find a twisted reality waiting to greet me at the end. I bittersweet road filled with stories I no longer remember, with kisses I can no longer taste with heartaches that will last beyond the end of my futile life.

I’m too tired to keep walking towards a betrayal by the illusion of my life so I just stand here and play my last trick on this world by letting my reflection carry me towards the grave that holds my last dream.

• A minute in exile (21/09/2019)