Clouds filled the sky with pride … And obscured the sun. And imposed its authority on the weather in self-praise, and Scattered here and there to exceed all the limit of the horizon, and the cold came out smiling as wolf wants to attack on its prey. And the snow Covered everything and froze even the air atoms.
I Looked at the wet streets in silence and at the pavement that has been covered with the rains, I Looked again to see a body lying on the road, wearing only the sleeves of a shirt, alone without a family or a friend … he or she or it was dead, but why my tears refuse to get out or sneak behind my eyelids, do we still deserve to call ourselves human!!
You sleep in the night warmly, wrapped with your blanket in comfortable bed, and others in the cold, warm their self with the hate on this cruel society, you sit surrounded by the tenderness of hugs, and do not even bother yourself to ask about them, enjoy your selfish heart, and be happy with your Inhumanity that exceeded the limits of the imagination.
I don’t recognize this world any more,
I don’t even recognize this city,
where is the city of the lights?
when the darkness filled the souls,
where the breeze of the clean air,
Since when you became like this,
I hear the screams of the people everywhere,
and the groans of the air,
when we will witness the birth of your freedom,
when your streets will be filled with kindness,
when the people will not recognize the different colors,
when our hearts beats will be sync in the same beat,
when we will realize about our fake privilege,
when we will erase all kind of phobia,
Islamophobia, homophobia, even police phobia,
when we will remember our journey started in a womb,
not a black womb nor a white womb, was just a womb,
when we will realize that we are humans,
In a city some people called the city of humanity, where even the rocks start to forget the humanity exist, and among those rocks, the rocks of halle pajol, when it was inhabited by young girls and boys , old women and men and families, whose used to spend their day to prepare for their night by searching for blankets or a piece of cartoon to sleep on , or clothes to wear ‘ not to catch up what they missed in the fashion world ‘ but because they knew simple Equation ‘ more cloths = more worm ‘, they kept wondering what their guilt to be treated like this.
What was their guilt?
was their fault that they didn’t find place to live in?
was their fault that they didn’t find cloths to wear?
was their fault that they didn’t find welcome sign when they arrived?
Their fault was only that they share one verb which “Migrate”.
Few hundred meters from the camp, a group of migrants sitting in a bus station to protect themselves from the rains and trying to charge their phone in the station usb to check about their family, in that station you won’t hear anything except the sound of the rains drops on the metal roof.
A guy passed in front of them and stopped and ask them “what’s the time, -please?”, one of them check his watch and said “ it’s 8:43 PM , oh I am sorry my watch still in Sudan Time “ , the one next to him check his phone and said “ damn it mine also still in Eritrea time” , the last one check his phone and said with a big smile “mine is in Paris time and it says 7:45 PM “ , the guy said: ( just out of curiosity, why you adjusted your time and not they didn’t), he replied (even they bought those watches in Europe but they change the time zone, and not all of us can change it), the guy thanks them and mumbled while he was leaving.
At early morning in the camp, an old man woke up and took his bottle of water to drink it with the Diabetes pills as the volunteer nurse suggested to him, that nurse who became his friend even they didn’t have language in common, they were communicating with a language of signs, sometimes with Arabic and other time French, their friendship translated by smiles and eye contact, they felt like they knew each other in another world or in another time, they was talking about big historical events that happened decades ago everyone from his side, and they found it more interesting than reading it in Wikipedia, at that morning the old man did as he does every morning which sitting and looking at the people who walking in street of and waiting for the breakfast line .
Not far from that a teenage boy brush his teeth in a tap of water which made to wash the street , he never thought that one day he will came to the great city to drink and wash his face and brush his teeth from this tap, while that he thought about his big brother who sacrificed his life for him , he had many images running in his head about his village and he felt sad when he remembered how it feels when he became fugitive in his own country, he continued brush his teeth, while looking into the building in front of him, he imagined different scenario at every window about the people who live there , he imagined happy family, or a happy lovely couple cuddling in the morning, or a single man make his coffee under his roof, or an old man saw and try everything in this world, suddenly he stopped his imagination and thought about the how much hope he had when he arrived in Italy and how he lost that hope, he felt more sad again but he remembered his favorite sentence (If yesterday was lost in grief, and if today will leave, then don’t get upset because yesterday will never return, and today will leave, but you have tomorrow then make it valuable), he finished brushing and get back to his piece of cartoon to wait for the coffee line .
there was also this family who reserve an area beside the pavement far away from the other people, the children were playing, and the mom was thinking what kind of life waiting for her and her children here in a country that welcomed them by let them in the street, she kept asking herself (did I made the right decision by following my life partner? am I a guest here or a ghost? Am I welcomed here? ), why they don’t do as we do in my village, if someone came or even pass by our village or get lost, we host him or her or them in the host home, we never care who they are or how they look like, I remember how the families racing in the morning to offer things to the guests, that was a tradition in my village , as many good traditions, we didn’t invent it but it’s was part of the human nature, she remember how she was happy every time there were guests, she used to prepare in the morning the milk tea and the breakfast and the hygiene for the guests but her neighbor was faster than her, even sometimes she had fight with her neighbor about how she doesn’t let her arrive first, why we enter this country as shadow and living as shadows, why I don’t even bother myself to ask instead of thinking which line I should go first!!! .
But none of them knew in that Monday there will be no coffee line neither cloths line nor breakfast line.
Youssif Haliem
Youssif Haliem -Blog 
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