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MARTYRDOM A poem written following the announcement of Ibraham Afa’s death. By Bereket Habte Selassie
In the dreamy hours
Of the Opening Night
The rote incantation
Of ritual matters
Was set aside.
The news was broken.
Did I hear it right?
It was drowned in
The burst of gun fire
Re-ver-berating in
the stillness of the night,
the “funeral dirge”
of the freedom fighter.
The news was broken,
the Congress shaken
Ibrahim is gone!
Ibrahim Afa,
the name that struck
their stony heart
like a burning arrow,
is now just a memory
Ibrahim is gone
we were suddenly told,
and I turned to you,
bereaved companions,
for the salient emotion,
of homage in grief
and lachrymal commotion.
But I saw instead
Steely…. Stoic…. silence
born of sacrifice,
which has taken so much
we have ceased to mourn
or count our losses.
Ibrahim is gone.
and his martyrdom
stirs in me a storm
of painful memories;
familiar faces flash
back and forth
in the film of my mind.
Ibrahim, you’re gone
and softly, softly
do we weep for you;
softly, so as not
to hear our cries
and expose ourselves.
‘Tis a martial custom
sanctioned by necessity.
The torrential tears
contained in this ink
flow from the spring
of repressed sorrow.
But the ink will dry
and the tears give way
to a joyful tomorrow.
Ibrahim, you’re gone
and yet you are here,
you and the rest
of our “living dead.”
Our martyrs live;
we see them, hear them,
touch them daily
as we tend our
flowers of freedom
and the growing Tree
of Liberty,
nurtured
by their
precious blood.
(First published, March 1987, this poem was dedicated to Ibrahim’s widow, Nura Mohamed and their daughter, Sara
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