Exile!

Have you ever seen a nightingale apply for a permit to sing? Have you seen anyone executing a bird because of its heavenly song?

Have you come across a power so dark and so evil that it cannot tolerate the colour of sunflowers and daffodils? A power so satanic that it wants to burn and destroy all the angels, smearing their beautiful white wings with blood?

Have you heard of a place where the writers have their pens and their arms broken? Some are even found dumped in some alleyway with a blue ring printed around their necks or their throat cut. Imagine being a poet living in a place like that. Imagine writing poems about all that and not being tolerated by the powers that govern you. Imagine going to university with a long black gown and a headscarf that covers your sense of self, your womanhood, your livelihood, your youth and beauty.

Imagine being intimidated, kept in the background and classified as second class citizen just because you are born a woman. When two beautiful white doves on your chest are singing and your dark flowing hair wants to feel the warmth of the sunshine. When you have so much to say and have a voice as heavenly as the voice of angels to sing, but the barbwire of silence is wrapped around your neck suffocating all you have to say.

That is when you decide to flee. You decide to fly all the way across the oceans and mountains. Across the forests and deserts to find yourself a new nest, where you can rest on a branch and sing freely.

You fly in the lashing rain and against the violent wind that blows you backwards. You fly in the scorching sunshine that brings your brains to boil. You rest on the thorn bushes overnight and fly again when the first ray of sunshine peeks from behind the mountain.

Finally you get there. All your colourful feathers faded and dirty, your red beak now looking pale, your heart broken for all you have left behind.

You find yourself a nest on a strange tree. All the other birds are giving you strange looks. You want to wake up and smell the flowers of your native garden, but it all now seems like a vague dream. You think: “Well, at least now I can sing freely”. You sing your most beautiful song, but they all look at you strangely.
They don’t understand your language! You fade into the background and become a part of some sad lonely minority who can sing in a heavenly voice, “but it all sounds like gobbledygook!” cries the bird on the next tree.
This is living in exile.
It can take you months even years to find your voice in the new tongue. To be able to say what is erupting in your heart like an angry volcano.

When you finally find your voice, all you want to say is the stories of exile. To ask people to listen to the voiceless birds of exile…