The Unsilenced Song

The Unsilenced Song: From Desperation to Defiance in the Pursuit of Freedom

By Hana Eldeghedy

“I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark. Home is the barrel of a gun. No one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore. No one would leave home until home is a voice in your ear saying—leave, run, now. I don’t know what I’ve become.” — Warsan Shire

Freedom is like a hot summer day. We don’t miss it until it’s gone. We’re not aware of its beauty until it gets dragged bone and teeth into the mud and away from us. There’s a kind of waiting that comes hand-in-hand with Freedom. Invisible and shrouded, it sits and stays like a weight on the chest that carries the size of the sun. It doesn’t make itself known, hiding in the shadows like a coward, yet fills you with dread powerful enough to turn the brightest of stars into ink-black hopelessness. A dread that comes before the seemingly endless winter that is Occupation.

Freedom is like the inside of a pomegranate: difficult to reach but the moment you taste its sweetness, the struggle is forgone like it was never there. Occupation is the sharp arrow that pierces the pomegranate, dulling its vestal juice with the sting of metal. How callous the hunger of their greed. A wolf that bites and bites, leaving more martyrs than we know what to do with: fugitives from our temples, exiles from our bodies. The occupier left nothing to surrender.

At the altar of society, the dirge of Freedom echoes louder than ever. While we watch history unfold before our eyes, liberty’s wails are drowned out by the sounds of rockets and bombs of colonial oppression. While we witness the ravishment of the holiest place on Earth, the legacy of imperialism leaves deeper wounds than ever. The geometry of grief is inscribed on our bodies. Narratives are being erased and identities are being shackled under foreign rule. What they call holy wars and self-defense were nothing but genocides and usurpations.

But behind the agony of Occupation, whispers the symphony of Resistance, cutting the dictatorial noose around our necks, a defiance against the tyranny of the wolf, the blood of our fathers rising wet from the fields. The lamb will grow its teeth and bite back. Its body pulled taut like a bow, ready for violence, already used to the cruelty.

Resistance is an endlessly repeated cycle spanning continents and generations, transcending borders and the boundaries of time. It is etched into the DNA of those whose voices have been silenced for centuries, embedded in the scars of displacement and subjugation.

With Resistance flickers the ember of Hope, a reclaim of agency, an olive tree growing out of what’s left of our dead.

I talk of the olive trees, ancient symbols of peace, resilience, and endurance, standing as a testament to the enduring relationship between humanity and nature. Their story unfolds over decades, embodying the aphorism "labor of love." Cultivated in the rocky soils of the West Bank and the Galilee, these trees demand patience and dedication from those who tend to them. A bulldozer could never take that away. A history that is still living, embedded in the memory of the willing souls that patiently nurture life amidst adversity, the spirit of resistance and hope thrives in the hearts of those who refuse to surrender their heritage to the tyrannies of time. 

Roots, intertwined with the earth's sorrow, tell of vineyards stripped away, of lands tended by the toil of our kin, only to be seized from our grasp by the greed of the wolf. While people of love, compassion, and forgiveness, the raw terror we’ve endured, the butchering of our tongues and culture, and the horrors we’ve seen, have forced us into new levels of faith, determination, but also vengeance.

So, beware of the hunger that whispers through the generations, the insatiable thirst born of indignation. Beware the rage and anger simmering and boiling beneath the surface, fueled by progenies who saw nothing from the intruders but injustice. For within us lies a resilient spirit, an unwavering will to survive despite the spoils of history. We bled on our white clothes—we bore them redly. The pangs of hunger gnaw at the core of our being, and the desperation and deprivation claw at our existence: we are left with no choice but to consume the flesh of those who stripped us bare of it. The rivers of legacy and loss rush through our veins, crimson waters circling ‘round.

From generations who never knew peace: beware our wrath. Beware our fury.

The song of Freedom will not be silenced any longer.

Author Bio: Hana Eldeghedy is an Egyptian eighteen-year-old med student who resides in Cairo. She finds an escape in her notes app and a relief in expressing herself through writing.