An eighteen year old girl, a powerful young poet, writes about her life now:
“There, on the other side,
time changes, hours pass, and it gets darker,
the sky takes off its dim dress, then the morning arrives,
but here where I live, and breathe, life wears its black dress constantly,
to mourn the labor of my land,
which took a long time.
Here, the hanging clock, in my room is broken,
not only this one, everyone’s clock is broken here,
my mother keeps saying:
everyone is waiting for the elixir,
we’ve had it with the grief and agony,
in this holy land, we sleep and wake up on the sound of bombing and shooting
so the first light of day rises in the evening,
lighting up the sky with the blood of martyrs,
here death sleeps not far from us,
we all walk towards freedom, towards hope,
we walk on the shattered glass of our broken windows,
we walk on stones that once were a house, carrying stories and secrets,
we walk with the screams of children, and the groans of mothers pulsating over and over in our ears.”
Nadine Murtaja, 18 years old.
