Repatriation
By Pacifist Farooq
Arakan is still a battlefield
and repatriation without security is
like death coming to take me out.
The news walks in my ears.
I tremble, knowing my body as a burden on others.
I will walk back to my land
if I get my citizenship rights back.
I want to soak my body in the Mayyu river,
Not to be boiled under the sun of the camp.
I want to freeze my body in the chest of mother Arakan,
Rather than be dried on the back of a refugee camp.
Don’t force me into hell.
Don’t bulldoze me into a trap
(Burmese military),
I’m not sure i will survive again.
I saw the world cry for us, Rohingya,
They cry for our human rights.
But, this time, I wonder if cries will be true.
Pacifist Farooq is a Rohingya poet, teacher and genocide survivor from Butihdaung Township who was violently displaced with his family from Myanmar into Bangladesh in 2018.
