KAZU's Lisa Ledin has been friends with the Esbers for the past six years. The Esbers are from Syria, and have been living in constant trauma since the Syrian-Turkish earthquake on February 6th, 2023.
Lisa asked the Esbers to talk about their lives. Osama Esber --- a journalist and father came to KAZU's studios to read his poem "On the Fault Lines, On War Lines." It's republished with his permission.
On the Fault Lines, On War Lines
When we came to life
we were born on the fault lines
and grew up on war lines.
Since our birth
the land under our feet was unstable.
The buildings we live in sway
as if built in the void.
Light rises, trickling upon us
and darkness like the river Acheron.
Walking a tightrope,
we wonder how we balance
over the abyss, while it mocks us, saying,
“Wherever you run, I am under you”.
When the earth cracked with anger
and swallowed everything,
when history showed its claws
and tore off parts of our map,
when power showed its fangs
and chewed off heads and the iron of buildings,
the play took its dimensions
in consecutive explosions
in crazy pressing and releasing
in a blind sliding of rocks
in a cleft that looked like the jawline of hell
in a recklessness inside the earth
matched by what occurs inside some human heads.
Bodies broke
over the plates of tyranny
like the blind tremor broke the walls of earth.
Oh nine large tectonic plates,
twelve small tectonic plates,
which hug all of us with two rocky hands,
and move slowly on the earth’s mantle,
stones that crush heads,
rubble that buries bodies,
bullets and explosions that do the same,
warmongers and poverty makers,
we are here,
on the crest of our planet
running away between tremors
through slits in holy books
through cracks in doctrines
through holes in flags,
the earth boils under our feet,
behind us the tidal wave is running
and below the rocks roll
in the forty-second dance of the fall.
