Wings Carry Me

[thcartierrug]

[zrxis]

[bombayblack]

[middleeasternpoetry]

New Year, don’t come to our homes, for we are wanderers from a ghost-world, denied by man. Night flees from us. Fate has deserted us. We live as wandering spirits with no memory, no dreams, no longings, no hopes. We wish to be dead, and are refused by the graves. We wish to write history by the years. If only we knew what it is to be bound to a place… If only memory, or hope, or regret could one day block our country from its path. If only we feared madness. If only our lives could be disturbed by traveller shock, or the sadness of an impossible love. If only we could die like other people. - Nazik Al Malaika

*Kurdish girl, Iraq, 1991 Al Anfal Campaign 

[mapsontheweb]

The Empire of Alexander the Great.

[king-smaurent]

Favorite Alexander the Great facts:

Likely had one blue eye and one brown eye like your fave Mary-sues

Legit thought he was the child of Zeus.

From a young age showed very little interest in sex, especially the opposite sex which was concerning to everyone around because that’s not Manly™️

There’s an alleged story that his reasoning for this is because sex reminded him he was mortal. Likewise sleep.

Like when he was deep in to Persia and trying to integrate Persian customs in to his rule to be more appealing to the Persians, he constructed a harem of women, one for every night of the year but there’s little evidence that he had any interest in them beyond appearances.

But he did have female companions, and did seem to form friendships with women, particularly older ones.

He also started dressing Persian, but drew the line at wearing trousers because skies out thighs out amiright

Slept with his prized copy of the Iliad under his pillow with also a dagger

A nerd who also walked around with a copy of Herodotus.

Horse girl

Short

tbh this really is my favorite fact. When you know his legacy before you know him it’s not something you expect and I always get a chuckle out of certain stories:

When he got to Susa and made a grand gesture of sitting on the throne reserved only for the great king (See: Extra Af) ancient sources talked about how, because he was shorter than average and def. shorter than the Persian kings, his feet dangled and his pages had to scramble to find an appropriate foot stool to save face.

When meeting with Darius’ captive mother he walked in with his closest friend Haphaesteon to whom Sisygambis started pleading to because she assumed he was the king because he was the taller of the two.

“Alexander assured her that she was not wrong —Hephaestion was just as much Alexander as he was”

[tastefullyoffensive]

[viinnttaaggee]

[eyexunt]

[7tny]

[middleeasternpoetry]

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. - Khalil Gibran

[middleeasternpoetry]

Not atheist and I love God. I know in what corner He is. I can find Him, like a teenage girl who knows where to place the mascara. The path to His heart is simple; with laughter you can find it. He does not have a closed face. He does not have hellfire. He does not torture people. He does have not dark designs. For those who stay up late at night, He is a blanket and stars. For the thirsty, He is a stretched river. He has the smell of an orchard dew. He carries the goodness of the resigned. This is God. The God I grew up with; the One who reared me. I laughed in His face when I saw heavens is but a friendly chat. He took me by the hand… I do not know where He took me…. This is the God I talked to and He talked to me. He told me: laugh and love the people, you will find me. He told me: in the ecstasy of the lover, you will find me. He told me: in the perplexity of the maltreated, you will find me. He told me: when you are eager, carrying a heavy load, look at it carefully, You will find the traces of My arms. If you do not like a branch on a tree, oh eager soul, I will forget you and I ask you kindly to forget Me. If you hate Me, I will not blame you. I will not hate you if you love another Lord. Be safe and happy. Go, leave Me. I will be with you. I will open my Heaven and I remain waiting for you. If you want to pray, not pray, I will not force you. Why are you afraid of Me? You were the work of My hands, I will not break you. I will not torture you, humiliate you, nor shun you. If you want to live alone, live alone. If you want to leave, leave. If you want to come, I am waiting. This is God. The God I knew with the eagerness of children. I knew Him in the greenness of trees. I knew Him in the tear of a perplexed one. Before He was disfigured by some. They made Him seeking vengeance. Why? Why did God become a result? A reaction reserved specifically for the one who prays? Between hell and heaven? He is a tent of dew in the summer for the poor. He covered anyone with warm heart. God in the world is victory. God is a house and a place for the homeless. God is a matter of choice. I am against all temples, all mosques, all churches, when they make God a business. I am against the religion that connects the greatness of God with a minaret. I am against the first teacher who said to me, read the opening chapter, you will get a women and a long river of wine. I declare my withdrawal from the old traditions and the new traditions; from the faces that said God is fearsome; His hellfire never subsides. I have such a heartache that can put the world on fire like a cigarette. Because of you, my contemplation is enormously large. The ache in my heart is a whole poem. My wound like a cave. I am suffocating. Yes, suffocating! I feel the world has no tales of love. I feel religion remained everywhere; like a tear in a shirt still unstitched. I began to think and doubt people, when I found the man who prays is a thief. When I saw the woman who visits the holy places… the palms of her hands are but mouths… when I saw God stolen from the face of a child… I saw the fasting man who is afraid of a gulp of water but his eyes rape all the women in the market. - Adham `Adil

[middleeasternpoetry]

[middleeasternpoetry]

When Valia asked me,  ‘When did you first set foot in the world?’, my laugh, like a rhubarb shoot - pokes its head through the snow of my mouth. My laugh is a sob, that crumples all the smiles in the world. Yes, Valia! I was Neanderthal, when I first set foot in this world. With my own eyes I witnessed the era of the prophets, the shameful passage of history, marched down the wrinkles on my forehead.  And yet… the swindling institutions of the rotting conscience of the age have not recorded my name in the book of the living. - Pashew

*“The tears are not from my eyes, they are from the old wounds in my heart.” - A Kurdish man in Derik, under Turkish military curfew for the last 9 days.

[middleeasternpoetry]

If you could one by one count all the leaves in this garden. If you could count all the fish, little and big, in the flowing river in front of you. If you could one by one count the migratory birds during their migration season. From the North to South and from the South to North. I would also promise to count one by one all the victims of this beloved land of Kurdistan. 

*Thousands of Kurds, driven out of Iraq by Saddam’s troops, were forced to live on the side of a mountain range between Iraq and Turkey. A thousand died a day from lack of water, denied to them by the Turks who would not allow them to come into Turkey.

[unterrible]

[middleeasternpoetry]

The people of this world are like the three butterflies in front of a candle’s flame. The first one went closer and said: I know about love. The second one touched the flame lightly with his wings and said: I know how love’s fire can burn. The third one threw himself into the heart of the flame and was consumed. He alone knows what true love is. - Rumi

[middleeasternpoetry]

I know the voice of depression still calls to you. I know those habits that can ruin your life still send their invitations. But you are with the Friend now and look so much stronger. You can stay that way and even bloom! Keep squeezing drops of the sun from your prayers, work, music and from your companions’ beautiful laughter. Keep squeezing drops of the sun from the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved and, my dear, from the most insignificant movements of your own holy body. Learn to recognise the counterfeit coins that may buy you just a moment of pleasure, but then drag you for days like a broken man behind a… now, sweet one, be wise. Cast all your votes for dancing! - Hafiz