Translated by Athraa Nasir
Finally, I decided to die here
Under the (snowing sky ) of Belarus.
Under the steps of its skinny, beautiful girls,
Where their laughs disperse the evening dreariness.
Here in this faraway forest.
I don’t want to die in my homeland.
I don’t like the sand’s dreariness and the depression of the salt.
I don’t want my grave to align with a depressing headstone,
Between the graves of my friends, whom the war took them by the hand
And they slept there, frightened by the Angel of death and the violence of the questions.
And as an old soldier,
Like an ex-warrior in the plains, the mountains and the marches,
I have the right, after the war has left me to breathe without a reason for more other years.
I have the right,
To choose those snowy hills to lie down under them with an mysterious safety and happiness.
Actually, things were not that worse,
Life in my homeland was a joyful journey, sometimes,
And a hard one in others.
But death under the white snow
Is considered a suitable end to my soul.
The soul of an old warrior.
I wave to you, faraway land.
I wave to you, my homeland.
I wave to you, my mother
With shaking hands.
I wave to my beloveds
And dedicate the glorious years of my youth to them.
The years of the 80s when they were jumping like black rats behind
The barricades,
Between the embrasures and the trenches.
There on the fire line
In Al-Faw and the Fish Lake
On the Maot
mountain in Kurdistan
And the Kaseeka hills in Mandili
Where the artillery and the mortars play
their most frank music
So the soldiers can go for, once for a short leave
And another to the graveyard
I wave to my city.
I wave to Al Rasheed Street,
To the Rasafi Statue
To the Tigris and the dizzy gulls,
And the Waziriaya pavement and Bab Al Mu’adham,
With the hands of the old warrior;
With a hand that fire bullets in the emptiness.
When the (PKC) is all that I have on the line of fire,
I wave with a dull hand that is shooting a bullet in the emptiness
And sometimes write words with a pseudonym,
For the new generation and the rest of mind.
This is how I got close to the snow of 2013
Saying farewell to the burning sun
And the rest of the dust.
Saying farewell to the old follies that marked my life’s years.
How much a man can be lucky; when allowed,
With enough freedom to choose the white bright snow as a cover for his last sleep.
With the years that are left;
I will live in a small cottage
On the suburbs of Minsk,
Listening to the music of Mozart, Chopin and Beethoven.
And, when spring will come, and the butterflies fly near the dewy windows; Vivaldi will be the right cho
I will read Husserl,
And Martin Heidegger,
And Merleau-Ponty,
Not to know that “conscious is the same as human existence that is thrown in this world”!!!
But to give my life a deep meaning.
To justify my death in the snow of Belarus,
Belarus which I passed by coincident.
And finally, I decided to die here,
Under the snow of Belarus,
Under the steps of its skinny girls,
Where their laughs disperse the dreariness of the evening.
Here in this faraway forest.
Minsk 2013