Don’t forget me; I’m the detainee

Don’t forget me; I’m the detainee

By Tarif Yoyssef Agha

Don’t forget me; I’m the detainee in the dictator’s prisons,

Don’t forget me, as I suffer every day from a tremendous torture

No one knows where I am, even I don’t know,

My family is weeping for me, and I’m weeping for myself

I feel that time has stopped,

As no one knows where my location is

I know I am in a cell that looks like a grave hole,

A cell that is located in an underground corner

I don’t know what electricity is anymore,

Except when it runs through my body

The heat of summer chokes me thousands of times,

The chill of winter penetrates deep into my bones

How many times was I about to die?

How many nights did they force me to stay naked?

How many times did I wish to die?

To make the tomb my home

There is nothing worse than being buried alive,

No one, including me, knows what my fate will be

We don’t have officers in our prisons,

But professional torturers who are worse than beasts

Here, I discovered that the human being is a ghoulish creature,

And I understood how hot the fire was

They torture me every day to revenge what

Muawya’s son did to Al-Hussein (happened 1400 years ago)

What makes me feel awful is that,

In my country, I’m treated as the enemy

And those who talk my language are

Worse than the worst oppressor

Their souls have no consciences,

And their hearts have no mercy

Don’t forget me; I’m the detainee in the dictator’s prisons,

Torture and humiliation are all I have here

***

A Poem translation

(Can be shared without permission)

By Tarif Youssef-Agha

An Expatriate Arab Syrian Writer & Poet

Member of the ‘Syrian Revolutionary Writers Assembly’

Friday December 18, 2015, Houston, Texas

This poem is a tribute to the souls of hundreds of thousands of the detainees in Assad’s jails, who were murdered or are still suffering the horrified treatments of the barbaric regime

http://sites.google.com/site/tarifspoetry