الاستجواب (Interrogation) from جلنار (Julanar) by Ziad Rajab

Interrogation


Who killed the Imam?
Informants fill my room,
soldiers boots are on my neck,
minutes, recording machines, photographers.
Who killed the Imam?


Who stabbed the dervish the owner of a method?
Who tore the robes, the scarf, and the elegant rosary?
Dear gentlemen:
Don’t pull my nails off searching the truth,
the truth always resides in the corpse of the one who was killed.
Dear gentlemen:
What is the benefit of my statement?
Since you - if I talk or not - will write:
What’s the use of my appeal?
Since you - if I talk or not - will hit,
since, from the time you ruled my country
you think instead of me..
my gentlemen, I’m not a dirty agent
as your informants say,
and did not steal a grain wheat nor did I kill an ant.
I keep on the daily five prayers..
and don’t miss the Friday sermon, my gentlemen..
For a quarter of a century, I am bowing and prostrating
I practice standing and sitting
and follow the sequence behind the honourable Imam.
He says: My Allah, may you destroy the Jewish state!
I say: My Allah, may you destroy the Jewish state!
He says: My Allah, may you disperse their reunion!
I say: My Allah, may you disperse their reunion!
He says: My Allah, may you cut off their seed!
I say: My Allah, may you cut off their seed!
He says: My Allah, may you drown their plowing and planting!
I say: My Allah, may you drown their plowing and planting!
And thus my honourable gentlemen,
I spent twenty years
living in a sheepfold,
I feed like sheep,
I sleep like sheep,
I piss like sheep,
I spin like a bead in the Imam’s rosary,
like a parrot, I repeat whatever the Imam says,
I have no brain.. no head.. no feet..
from his beard I inhale the flu,
and the tuberculosis in the bones..
Every Friday I’m being whipped with a heroic sermon,
I swallow the statement, the splendid, and infallible poems,
I swallow nonsense.
My Gentlemen:
with this crescent sword that you see,
I stabbed him in his chest and neck,
I stabbed him in his mind that is rotten as a wood plank,
I stabbed him in my name,
and in the name of millions of sheep.
Gentlemen: I know that my guilt deserves execution,
but by killing him I killed
all the cockroaches that chant in the darkness.

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