Untitled - Manal Al-Adawi

We must wake up,

We must burn hatred and turn the page,

Let us hold our hands together and walk towards the awakening.

Come with me, my brothers, my cousins, to change history.

With our will and the unity of our goals, we will

open a new road to dignity.

Do you know what kept us in the dark?

It was our fear of the unknown,

Our enduring problem of not accepting anything new,

And our anxiety at losing what’s left of our grace.

But you do not know, or you pretend you do not understand,

That what we are in now is the most outrageous curse.

North, south, west and east,

We all suffer from the curse of the crisis:

High prices and changing conditions,

As if we were inside a hurricane,

As if we receive from all sides the honor of a slap.

The victim is from our side, the murderer from yours, 

Or vice versa, all is true and shamefully wrong.

None of us is a loser, none of you is a winner,

We all pay for the losses!

Come with me, oh you Yemeni, let us unite the goals,

For you and I  are the ones with tearful eyes.

It does not matter if your beliefs or rituals differ,

What is important is that we all celebrate Fridays.

The land where I am now,

And the land where you are now,

Is the same land where our grandfathers celebrated their unification,

And together they made the glory of this nation.

For the sake of “Athan” sounding from the  minarets of our mosques,

And for the sake of every sacred speck of dust in our country,

Let us stand together for one moment, and let there be a renaissance.

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Manal Al-Adawi (born 1988) Yemen

Source: In The Land Of Shattered Windows