Riyadh’s Crud Reality

By Wahab Al Negashi
Tigrai Online, November 22, 2013

Oh Riyadh!

Have you gone mad?

Lost your moral compass, your mind?

Oh Medina!

Why have thou unleashed

Wild lynch mobs in multitude

At peaceful migrants working for their daily bread

Under poor conditions for a menial pay

Suffering abuse and labouring precariously

With a threat of deportation and a revoked salary

An unfortunate and callous daily reality

Forced to acquiesce to discrimination and inequality

Exploitation, maltreatment and inferiority

To stay at the back of the bus, in the background

In an African migrant’s designated dune, a mound

Subject to the whims of an accidental overlord

A reality of the crud

In the desolate ground

Oh Riyadh!

The veil of old

Is now cracked

Offering a sneak peek in full HD

Of your transgressions in landscape and portrait

A reality of existence in the belly of your beast

An exacting verity where even the most vulnerable child of a migrant

Though born and raised in your midst

Is considered an alien with a “black heart”

A threat, an undesirable guest

Open your eyes, Oh Riyadh!

Oh Medina, open your eyes

Remove your blinders

Hold your horses

What have you done to the migrants?

The shepherds looking after your lot

 The Africans who looked to Mecca for import

To find purpose; their life story’s setting and plot

Only to become the scape goat

Of an unruly mob that campaigned to hunt

Brutalize, disposes and humiliate

Oh Medina!

Observe the panoramic view of the crud

Reality on the ground

For what goes around

Is bound

To come around

Karma, you should avoid

Oh Riyadh!

Oh Medina!

This unfortunate

Fateful moment

Should be a time for atonement

For culling policy excesses and maltreatment

For making whole, for doing right

By the wronged, the migrant

A relation of the “Muhajirun” long lost

 A “Sahib” of the prophet (PBUH)

A faithful descendant

Of Al Negashi

A Righteous Emperor, a Habeshi

TIGRAI Online