24th November, 2022
By Nehru Odeh
Dark clouds, imminent signs
And our crooked paths are gathered home
Dark clouds, pitch darkness everywhere
And our crooked paths are gathered home
But where is home
Where everywhere is homeless
Where is refuge
Where nowhere is safe
Where is refuge
Where everywhere is a refugee
Where are our returning airs, our homes
When you have not returned
May not return
Yes you may not return
And you were captured and led by the tether
You were parked and spirited to the land of the spirits
You were derobed and changed into a spirit
You were married and acclimatized to a world without climate
To a world without home, without hope, without life, without love
To a war without end
But the day you lost your virginity was the day we lost our manhood
Do you ever dream of home, Leah
Do you dream of home that turns out not to be home
Do you dream of daddy’s and mummy’s love in a loveless world
Do you dream of the sun-baked sands of Chibok on which you built castles
Do you dream of school where you were made captive
Do you dream of the aborted dreams you had
Do you dream of faith that now lies famished and forlorn?
Do not say your faith is your fate, Leah
Do not say your fate cancels your faith, Leah
Do not say your faith is married to your fate, Leah
Do not say that is the end, in a world without faith, Leah
You did not fail your parents
Your homeland failed you
You did not fail your faith
Your homeland failed you.
You are not alone in your aloneness
We are all alone in our aloneness
You are not homeless in your homelessness
We are all homeless in our homelessness
For where is home where everywhere is homeless
As our crooked paths are gathered home
And we are all faithful to our ill-fated fate.
*Leah Sharibu was one of the over 100 girls abducted from Government Girls Science and Technical School in Dapchi, Yobe State, Nigeria in February 2018. Five of the girls were reported killed during the abduction. However, ISWAP released all the other girls few weeks later, except for Leah Sharibu, the only Christian among the abductees. ISWAP, according to reports by the released girls decided to keep Sharibu because she refused to comply with their demand to drop her faith and embrace Islam. She has remained in ISWAP captivity since then.
Nehru Odeh, journalist, writer and poet was an active member of the Poetry Club, University of Ibadan. He is the author of The Patience of an Embattled Storyteller and writes for TheNEWS/PMNEWS.