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.

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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.