Haven't you heard?
There's a man in our woods.
He has lived here all his life;
Unwelcomed, feared, loathed.
We believe him to be a zealot; tainted.
He lives to remind us of his competence, insurgence.
"This is our land", "leave or perish", we tell him.
But he only shakes his bandaged head, holding firmly onto his crutches.
He sits by an Olive tree spending his days weaving Tatreez,
While listening to Ataaba on his rusty radio.
The sound of oud entices us indecently. What a rot to our souls!
Our children cannot help but follow the whimsies of the music.
We don't let them go any further;
Who knows what the man will do?
Who knows how he'll appeal?
He prays all the time to a god none of us recognize.
The elders say he curses us,
That he plots against us in our sleep,
They say he is the devils' apparition.
His belief, his practices are evidence enough,
He isn't one of us.
So, he isn't human to us.
There's a man in our woods
He's been here all his life.
He claims our land,
But we will give him a fight.
Don't you dare consider him,
Don't you dare sympathize.
There's thousands of us, only one of him
In the black of the night, we set the woods on fire,
The blazing red amidst the forest green,
And the man in the midst of it all stands,
Wearing a white thobe, head held high.
There's thousands of us, only one of him.
"But why do I feel bad?"
That's what he wants you to feel, yeled.
He plays with your mind.
"How do I stop?'
Stop feeling.
Stop the little twists of your heart.
Be strong.
"To be strong means to be heartless?"
Something revolts inside me, I force out a yes.
There's a man in our woods
And we hate him because no matter how hard we try-
He stays.
And in the quietness of our own failure,
We hear our hearts falter and miss a few beats,
And we don't see our reflection in the water, we only see malevolence.
Someone pulled at the loose ends of humanity's apparel and it came undone
Only to reveal the depravity of deceit.
Between the hours of conscience and cruelty there's a gap in time,
I call it dawn.
I approach the man
And ask him one question,
"Why do you persist?"
He smiles tenderly,
"Iman."
There's a man in the woods.
