Identity Card

Omar Khoury

Record!
I am an Arab.
And the number of my identity card is 50,000.
And my children number 8,
and the ninth will come after the summer.
Are you not angry? 

Record!
I am an Arab.
And I work with comrades
In the quarry of stone,
and my children, they number 8.
And I carve for them their loaves of bread,
their notebooks, and their clothes
from this stone.
But never shall I kneel 
or beg for alms before your door,
and so I ask: are you not angry?

Record!
I am the Arab
who is called by no name,
who awaits the country that will come
from the eruption of anger. 
My roots became roots
long before my time of birth,
long before the ages blooming,
long before the season of cypress and olive
when the grass prayed for nourishment. 
My father comes from humble fields,
and not from noble sirs.
His father before him was a country-dweller,
with a history but not a memoir.  
My house is made from sticks and branches,
nothing but a shed to the warden.
Does the life in which I am called by no name
comfort you?

Record!
I am an Arab!
And the color of my hair 
is the coal from the quarry
and the color of my eyes
is the brown of the fields.
That which defines me:
the kuffiyeh, the checkered cloth
and clasping cords on my head. 

My address:
I come from the village, Unknown to you.
And from its streets, Nameless to you. 
And its men? They work in the quarry of stone.
But still I ask: are you not angry?

Record!
I am an Arab!
And you imprisoned Karmah’s ancestors.
And you stole the homeland we once tilled,
I and all of my children.
And you left us nothing but pebbles,
for me and all of their children. 
Or shall your leaders take them, too?
As they had before threatened. 

What has happened has happened.
But be it recorded in the first of the pages:
Hate has no place for my people,
And to thieve is the same. 
But if I were to starve,
I shall feast on the flesh of my oppressor. 
Beware.
Beware. 
Of my hunger.
And of my rage.