Refugee's Psalm
The Book of Psalms in the Bible is a text reflecting a wide range of human experiences and emotions. This explains its popularity throughout the ages, as people in very different historical contexts could recognise themselves in it. One of the participants in the Sacred Queer Stories project, Tom Muyunga-Mukasa, was inspired by the Psalms in relation to his own experiences as a former refugee who now lives in the United States. He has turned this inspiration into a modern addition to the Book of Psalms - Psalm 151, or a Refugee's Psalm:
By Tom Muyunga-Mukasa
I am a refugee
I fled and came to you empty handed,
though with grey-matter intact,
I came because I abandoned,
I gave up another life,
And here I came to renew it,
I am the one whom,
you sometimes meet,
in parades with or without,
masks behind which my survival is defined,
on the cobbled sidewalk of your city,
I cover myself behind spread wares,
sometimes you pay me,
other times,
citing those sore-eye excuses,
you call,
the tax-collectors,
or the police,
soon I disappear,
the next day,
I return,
with different wares,
I am a refugee,
I do not decide how you treat me,
perhaps I am the one,
who is supposed to make history,
justified that I am part of the outsiders,
content that my status is weaponized,
it becomes the arsenal for xenophobes,
No!
I do not take your jobs,
Dear me!
I only labour to feed,
a hunger that bites,
bone, reason and direction,
not your kind of hunger,
I guess,
I am a refugee,
and by that alone,
I fired the first shot,
into a score of,
belligerent ideologies,
whose skirmishes,
see me as cheap labour,
an un-complaining fodder,
on a profit assembly-line,
geography is a mother,
so is racial identity,
but these too,
may be facilitated by whim,
I am a refugee,
I know about disenfranchisement,
I know what it means,
to avoid three meals a day,
so that one meal,
can take me all the way,
when it comes to how,
I am perceived,
it baffles me as well,
I am like weighing stones,
there is a scale I go through,
I have to be fixed to a certain weight,
to be an opportunity for welfare,
that way I deserve,
to get this or that,
according to one,
ideology or the other,
I would have thought,
I am equal,
but being a refugee,
reminds one,
of the good side,
of being a human-being,
of being regarded as human,
to be human,
is being in a place,
to be a refugee,
is coming from a place,
the refugee is defined,
as having come,
from someplace else,
to dwell among humans,
no need to specify,
they are not humans,
a lesser being,
only left for taxonomy,
to decipher,
until then,
‘we shall not provide them,
opportunities for,
a fulfilled self-determination,
no need to feed them,
knowing not,
which food they eat,’
I am a refugee,
When they celebrate,
their holidays,
a bolt of warmth,
tugs my heart
my face folds,
in the waves of laughter,
whose thrust shakes my body,
when their children sing,
mine held by the leash,
of my intense eye,
cannot hold their tunes,
looking for release,
and together,
like the common cause of freedom,
they sing,
this one holds the higher note,
the other,
the lower one,
they form a chorus,
of common humanity,
the music is heard,
by the blood,
coursing in all of us,
our pulses go wild,
I suffer,
when they lose,
a loved one,
I am a refugee,
I am a book,
on whose pages,
are written the lines,
about dignity,
I am a morning fragrance,
I am like the light,
I burst out,
for all,
to drink in at,
sunrise and sunset,
the midday sun,
a reminder of a,
brighter life,
the coldness of darkness,
eats at my bones,
but I know,
one day I shall reveal,
that I am human,
in whose grandeur of citizenship,
we all draw our sustenance,
and none can dare challenge that,
for in doing so,
we stoke fires of injustice,
we dishonour the cause of freedom.