Marcel Khalife - Passport

Artist: Marcel Khalife

Composer (poet): Mahmoud Darwish

Passport (translation)

They did not recognize me in the shadows

That suck away my color in this Passport

And to them my wound was an exhibit

For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs

They did not recognize me,

Ah . . . Don't leave

The palm of my hand without the sun

Because the trees recognize me

All the songs of the rain recognize me

 * Repeating previous line*

Don't leave me pale like the moon!

*****

All the birds that followed my palm

To the door of the distant airport

* Repeating previous line

All the wheatfields

All the prisons

All the white tombstones

All the barbed boundaries

All the waving handkerchiefs

All the eyes

* Repeating previous line*

were with me,

But they... dropped them from my passport!!

*****

Stripped of my name and identity?

On a soil I nourished with my own hands?

*Repeating previous line*

Today Job cried out

Filling the sky:

Don't make an example of me again!

Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,

Don't ask the trees for their names

Don't ask the valleys who their mother is

From my forehead bursts the sword of light

And from my hand springs the water of the river

*Repeating previous lines*

All the hearts of the people are my identity

So take away my passport!

حَسْرَةُ عُمَرِي....

كلهم...يتكلم بإسمي ويصادر حنجرتي!!

كلهم...يقاتل بإسمي!!

كلهم...يحكم بإسمي!! ويضطهد الناس بإسمي!!

ولم يسألني أحد يوماً رأيي!!!

 حَسْرَةُ عُمَرِي...أنني سأموت قبل أن أضع في صندوق اقتراع ولو ورقة بيضاء.

غادة السمان

The Lonely Shepherd

Artist: AHMET KOÇ