Here they are-my tribe descending from the heights of the past- dust- colored gray eyed
Winds of the future lash them towards oases populated with rainwater
Here they are - like locusts of imminent drought coming from the last lands of the world
They arrived and scattered in this sandy desert like stone
Here they are- sleeping at the borders of the blue clouds
Impoverished they bed down in bramble bushes
They dreamt of dawn and wept as they saw a thunderbolt tearing the darkness
limping in the circle of shut horizons, receding gradually
At dawn, their tears wetted the wind, the earth, and the trees,
Here they rise to their feet walking towards the limits of big cities
Hungry, thirsty, eating parched bread, drinking putrid water and fire
Here they are at the borders of big cities with hunched backs, broken
spirits, overspread in their shabby worn-out garments,
Here they are, whiplashed by the horsemen of the Tatar army driving them away from the gates of big cities.
Here they are before the gates, laying down like pieces of hollowed wood.
There they are, extinguished stars at the horizons of the blue clouds,
so that in this era, a final curtain comes down on the tales of the journeying Bedouins
Suleiman al-Fulayyih
