A young poet tells the story of Darfur | Emtithal Mahmoud

125,719 views ・ 2017-04-24

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00:12
I was 10 years old when I learned what the word "genocide" meant.
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It was 2003,
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and my people were being brutally attacked because of their race --
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hundreds of thousands murdered,
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millions displaced,
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a nation torn apart at the hands of its own government.
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My mother and father immediately began speaking out against the crisis.
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I didn't really understand it,
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except for the fact that it was destroying my parents.
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One day, I walked in on my mother crying,
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and I asked her why we are burying so many people.
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I don't remember the words that she chose
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to describe genocide to her 10-year-old daughter,
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but I remember the feeling.
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We felt completely alone,
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as if no one could hear us,
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as if we were essentially invisible.
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This is when I wrote my first poem about Darfur.
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I wrote poetry to convince people to hear and see us,
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and that's how I learned the thing that changed me.
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It's easy to be seen.
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I mean, look at me -- I'm a young African woman with a scarf around my head,
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an American accent on my tongue
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and a story that makes even the most brutal of Monday mornings seem inviting.
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But it's hard to convince people that they deserve to be seen.
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I learned this in my high school classroom one day,
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when my teacher asked me to give a presentation about Darfur.
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I was setting up the projector when a classmate of mine said,
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"Why do you have to talk about this?
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Can't you think about us and how it will make us feel?"
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(Laughter)
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My 14-year-old self didn't know what to say to her,
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or how to explain the pain that I felt in that moment,
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and in every moment that we were forced not to talk about "this."
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Her words took me back to the days and nights on the ground in Darfur,
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where we were forced to remain silent;
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where we didn't speak over morning tea
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because the warplanes overhead would swallow any and all noise;
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back to the days when we were told
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not only that we don't deserve to be heard
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but that we do not have a right to exist.
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And this is where the magic happened,
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in that classroom when all the students started taking their seats
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and I began to speak,
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despite this renewed feeling that I didn't deserve to be there,
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that I didn't belong there
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or have a right to break the silence.
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As I talked,
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and my classmates listened,
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the fear ebbed away.
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My mind became calm,
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and I felt safe.
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It was the sound of our grieving,
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the feel of their arms around me,
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the steady walls that held us together.
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It felt nothing like a vacuum.
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I choose poetry because it's so visceral.
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When someone is standing in front of you, mind, body and soul,
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saying "Witness me,"
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it's impossible not to become keenly aware of your own humanity.
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This changed everything for me.
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It gave me courage.
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Every day I experience the power of witness,
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and because of that, I am whole.
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And so now I ask:
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Will you witness me?
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They hand me the microphone
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as my shoulders sink under the weight of this stress.
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The woman says,
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"The one millionth refugee just left South Sudan.
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Can you comment?"
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I feel my feet rock back and forth on the heels my mother bought,
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begging the question:
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Do we stay, or is it safer to choose flight?
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My mind echoes the numbers:
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one million gone,
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two million displaced,
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400,000 dead in Darfur.
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And this lump takes over my throat,
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as if each of those bodies just found a grave
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right here in my esophagus.
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Our once country,
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all north and south and east and west,
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so restless the Nile couldn't hold us together,
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and you ask me to summarize.
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They talk about the numbers as if this isn't still happening,
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as if 500,000 didn't just die in Syria,
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as if 3,000 aren't still making their final stand
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at the bottom of the Mediterranean,
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as if there aren't entire volumes full of fact sheets about our genocides,
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and now they want me to write one.
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Fact:
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we never talked over breakfast,
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because the warplanes would swallow our voices.
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Fact:
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my grandfather didn't want to leave home,
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so he died in a war zone.
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Fact:
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a burning bush without God is just a fire.
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I measure the distance between what I know
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and what is safe to say on a microphone.
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Do I talk about sorrow? Displacement?
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Do I mention the violence,
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how it's never as simple as what you see on TV,
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how there are weeks' worth of fear before the camera is on?
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Do I tell her about our bodies,
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how they are 60 percent water,
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but we still burn like driftwood,
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making fuel of our sacrifice?
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Do I tell her the men died first, mothers forced to watch the slaughter?
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That they came for our children,
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scattering them across the continent until our homes sank?
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That even castles sink at the bite of the bomb?
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Do I talk about the elderly,
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our heroes,
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too weak to run, too expensive to shoot,
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how they would march them,
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hands raised, rifles at their backs,
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into the fire?
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How their walking sticks kept the flames alive?
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It feels too harsh for a bundle of wires and an audience to swallow.
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Too relentless,
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like the valley that filled with the putrid smoke of our deaths.
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Is it better in verse?
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Can a stanza become a burial shroud?
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Will it sting less if I say it softly?
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If you don't see me cry, will you listen better?
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Will the pain leave when the microphone does?
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Why does every word feel as if I'm saying my last?
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Thirty seconds for the sound bite,
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and now three minutes for the poem.
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My tongue goes dry the same way we died,
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becoming ash, having never been coal.
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I feel my left leg go numb,
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and I realize that I locked my knees,
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bracing for impact.
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I never wear shoes I can't run in.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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So, I wanted to leave on a positive note,
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because that's the paradox that this life has been:
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in the places where I learned to cry the most,
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I also learned how to smile after.
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So, here goes.
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"You Have a Big Imagination
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or
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400,000 Ways to Cry."
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For Zeinab.
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I am a sad girl,
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but my face makes other plans,
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focusing energy on this smile, so as not to waste it on pain.
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The first thing they took was my sleep,
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eyes heavy but wide open,
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thinking maybe I missed something,
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maybe the cavalry is still coming.
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They didn't come,
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so I bought bigger pillows.
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(Laughter)
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My grandmother could cure anything
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by talking the life out of it.
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And she said that I could make a thief in a silo laugh
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in the middle of our raging war.
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War makes a broken marriage bed out of sorrow.
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You want nothing more than to disappear,
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but your heart can't salvage enough remnants to leave.
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But joy --
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joy is the armor we carried across the borders of our broken homeland.
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A hasty mix of stories and faces
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that lasts long after the flavor is gone.
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A muscle memory that overcomes even the most bitter of times,
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my memory is spotted with days of laughing until I cried,
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or crying until I laughed.
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Laughter and tears are both involuntary human reactions,
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testaments to our capacity for expression.
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So allow me to express
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that if I make you laugh,
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it's usually on purpose.
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And if I make you cry,
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I'll still think you are beautiful.
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This is for my cousin Zeinab,
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bedridden on a random afternoon.
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I hadn't seen her since the last time we were in Sudan together,
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and there I was at her hospital bedside
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in a 400-year-old building in France.
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Zeinab wanted to hear poems.
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Suddenly, English, Arabic and French were not enough.
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Every word I knew became empty noise,
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and Zeinab said, "Well, get on with it."
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(Laughter)
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And I read her everything that I could,
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and we laughed,
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and we loved it,
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and it was the most important stage that I've ever stood on,
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surrounded by family,
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by remnants of a people who were given as a dowry to a relentless war
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but still managed to make pearls of this life;
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by the ones who taught me to not only laugh,
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but to live in the face of death;
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who placed their hands across the sky,
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measuring the distance to the sun and saying, "Smile;
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I'm gonna meet you there."
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And for Zeinab --
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Zeinab, who taught me love in a place like France,
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Zeinab, who wanted to he.ar poems on her deathbed --
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Dilated fibromyalgia.
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Her heart muscles expanded
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until they couldn't function.
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And she held me, and she made me feel like gold.
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And I said, "Zeinab,
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isn't it strange that your only problem
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is that your heart was too big?"
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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