Loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Hamza was one of my hometown’s ordinary men who did manual labor for bread. When I saw him recently, the land still wore its mourning dress in the solemn windless silence and I felt defeated. But Hamza-the-unextraordinary said: “Sister, our land’s throbbing heart never ceases to pound, and it perseveres, enduring the unendurable, keeping the secrets of mounds and wombs. This land sprouting cactus spikes and palms also births freedom-fighters. Thus our land, my sister, is our mother!” Days passed and Hamza was nowhere to be seen, but I felt the land’s belly heaving in pain. At sixty-five Hamza’s a heavy burden on her back. “Burn down his house!” some commandant screamed, “and slap his son in a prison cell!” As our town’s military ruler later explained this was necessary for law and order, that is, an act of love, for peace! Armed soldiers surrounded Hamza’s house; the coiled serpent completed its circle. The bang at h...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51