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kola@aalbc.com
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 643
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 29, 2005 - 12:01 am: | 
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Hi, it's Kola.
My tribute poem (see below)......about slain Dutch filmmaker, Journalist (and my "comrade") Theo Van Gogh will be published next week in his country....THE NETHERLANDS.
Theo Van Gogh was on the TOP of the same Death List that my name appears with Ayan Hirsi of Somalia. In 2002, when Sudan put a "fatwa" on me---THEO called and was really worried about me and my kids.
Theo was gunned down in Amsterdam in November 2004 by Islamic Radicals.
BACKGROUND from DUTCH newspaper:
Kola Boof says: "Theo Van Gogh contacted me in 2002 after Sudanese officials threatened my life and issued an illegal fatwa. He contacted me a second time, in 2003, when my publisher in Morocco was firebombed. At this time I was living in hiding and he said that he wanted to get some film footage of Ayan Hirsi and me. It never came to anything, but he was a very kind, generous man. He told me to ignore the cruel treatment that I was receiving by the U.S. media and he wanted to know if my sons were alright and if I needed any money to feed my children while I was in hiding. He thought it was terrible that people could be killed or beaten just because they didn't agree with Islam. I thought he was a very smart man, and after they murdered him...I cried for days, because it made me realize just how much trouble people like him and I have gotten ourselves into and that at any moment, we can end up silenced by these terrorists and this fanaticism that grips the Islamic religion. I wrote "I Still Hear the Lion" as an affirmation of the tremendous risk Theo took in simply telling the truth and standing up for what is right. He was a hero, a lion."
__________________________
"I STILL HEAR THE LION"
by Kola Boof
Kunje me wat geven voor de pijn?
de sterke wind
heft de boom weggeblazen:
Silence is the sky...of the Brood.
Nothing drowns, because
this lake is the lake of memory
---and on the day that the Lion decides
to throw himself on the sword,
My blood is dead blood/my voice, like a killing sound,
all eternal...and this is the Sky of our sermons.
Surely as the wind blows---I become the Eyes
in his head.
I am his daughter who can see to the bottom
of the lake.
And yet....it has no floor.
The sweetly flowing Arabic of this Brood of scarlet robes.
Through each and every pregnancy.
Dear lake, my face on your surface...
This Sky has been coming forever.
Rippling...
The swan of his stroke.
His long white arms, reaching like thunder
swimming into the footpaths
the footpaths...of those who
walk on water.
I am underwater/Fully
And yet I still hear the lion
--I
the one who is listening.
Through gun-fire and moody wind
and Pain raining deeper than the bluest night in Amsterdam
---I hear the sound of that which cannot die.
The coming of man/the coming of my father.
For surely MAN always comes.
And will come again---through me.
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Mahogany Anais
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 231
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 29, 2005 - 12:27 am: |
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Kola, that is a lovely tribute to a kind soul. |
kola@aalbc.com
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 646
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 29, 2005 - 01:31 am: |
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Thanks, Mahogany.
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