Occupation 1943

Saadi Youssef

We boys, the neighborhood’s barefoot

We boys, the neighborhood’s naked

We boys of stomachs bloated from eating mud

We boys of teeth porous from eating dates and pumpkin rind

We boys will line up from Hassan al-Basri’s mausoleum to the Ashar River’s source

to meet you in the morning waving green palm fronds

We will cry out: Long Live

We will cry out: Live to Eternity

And we will hear the music of Scottish bagpipes, gladly

Sometimes we will laugh at an Indian soldier’s beard

but fear will merge with our laughs, and dispute them

We cry out: Long Live

We cry out: Live to Eternity

and reach our hands toward you: Give us bread

We the hungry, starving since our birth in this village

Give us meat, chewing gum, cans, and fish

Give us, so no mother expels her child

so that we do not eat mud and sleep

We boys, the neighborhood’s barefoot

do not know from where you had come

or why you had come

or why we cry out: Long Live

...............................

And now we ask: will you stay long?

And will we go on reaching our hands toward you?

London, December 3, 2002