‘Home to Camp’ and ‘Rohingya, the survivor’ by Zayed

Posted on: July 5, 2019 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: Refugee humanitarians

Reaching out with poetry
In my last post I introduced Zayed, a ‘refugee/humanitarian’ working now in Bangladesh. Although he has and uses other outlets, here are two poems Zayed wrote about and for his fellow Rohingya.

Home to Camp

Miles away, rivers apart
Screened off with demarcated fence
Expelled out intentionally
Though lived centuries together.

As a friend
As a brother
As a sister
Concerning to my creed and physique.

Then hunted me as an alien
Oppressed me as different belief
Lost thousands of my people on bloodbath
As Jews faced under Hitler.

No residences to call homes
No people to call neighbours
Like the world without a Sun☀
Chucked me out to another landscape.

Where limited space is designed for all
Like a cage in a million birds
But feels safe here
Where serves humanity.

Rohingya, the survivor

Sound likes thunder rumbling
Went up in smoke my homes
Scream all for the fear
Speeded up for the safety

Seen bodies laying around
The smell of the blood is everywhere
The decayed flesh covered by the flies and insects
Spaces are redden in every step

The undesirable cruelty made me faint
Unable to escape from the killing fields
The shot scar is bleeding on
Neither medic nor medicine

Near the burning homes
Near the killing fields
Shed tears when looks back
My people are on expulsion

Then lost of strength and hope
Too pain to shake my body
Like a mountain over my head
Pass day and night with hypersomnia
As the trauma shocks me unconscious

 

Tom Arcaro

Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers

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