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*** This song is about the concentration camp that the Israeli Occupation set up in Lebanon in the town of "Ansaar" in the Lebanese South (Al-Janoob) during the dark days of the Israeli occupation of the South of Lebanon. This is my own translation from Arabic into English. I dedicate this song to Lebanon in commemoration of Liberation Day, May 26, 2000, and to the people of Palestine. Rami E. Cremesti - May 26, 2001
" The barbed wire, the pitched tents, the high guard posts, the towers, the guard, a new city inhabited by thousands of men, a city for oppression and fear and thirst it's name is the 'Ansaar Concentration Camp'. A camp faraway which we forget or they want us to forget, and we live in our own little concentration camps, this distant camp, extends above us with its shadows, with sounds that come from behind the barbed wire, as if we are all there, or as if here is there, as if everything is in everything else, so that we become the prisoners, and we become Ansaar. Thousands of men brought in by the Slayer from the villages and towns, and occupied refugee camps, lead with their eyes blind-folded, and their arms chained, and brought them from suffering to suffering, and their trip was very long... In this city-camp, thousands of men live the life of waiting, fooling time and waiting, they live and dream, they try not to forget, and they inscribe in their collective memories our new collective memory. In their memories, our new memories, stories of the Slayer and the victim inscribed so that we do not forget... Ansaar is today the daily story of the South... Some of them come out of the concentration camp to come back to it, some of them never leave, some of them will leave, some of them will enter. The camp is like a miniature model of the South of Lebanon, of this wide Arab world, a silent world, one that has lost its ablility to speak and protest. However here in Ansaar, in the middle of Winter and cold and disease, they shout... The news of their uprisings has started to come out from behind the barbed wire. The Adha Feast, the beginning of the season of rain, Independence Day, and other insurrections that we know not about. The sound of fired shots that the peasants hear speak of their presence. On Independence Day they were the true Independence, they sang patriotic songs, light up torches, they were more beautiful than their stolen freedom, they were lighting up that flame that the Occupation was trying to extinguish. In Ansaar there is a completely forgotten life, the life of a generation and generations that understood the true meaning of Occupation... I am the lonely man, I look but I don't see, they ask and I answer or don't answer. They said "crucify him", they crucified me and it wasn't a crucifiction, it wasn't a woman. They crucified me and the Sun was falling on the Earth, and I fall on my burning face... I am a man from Ansaar and I am a man that saw. Darkness surrounds me, the eyes are drowned and I see, you were all there, time in your pockets, and songs on your fingers, and Death drowning in your clothes, I saw you... We were together, no one was left behind, even those that fell and did not find any one to burry them. They came. When they stopped us and called the men, I saw them get up, dusting the dust off their clothes, wiping streaks of blood with their sleeves, and i saw them come... And when they took us, and blind-folded us, I saw everything... and when I got thirsty, I thought of the springs that I left behind, and I did not cry. And from one hole to the next I walked with you, and from investigator to investigator... I have not forgotten the face of the suicide-fighter as she died, the face of a man from Tyre (Soor) who was drowning in his own clothes, then then he fell down as a bunch of wrinkled clothes, the face of a child from Qana, full of thorns and his eyes were lost in the distance; I have not forgotten and I will not forget your faces, the face of the sea, and I am there... I am a man from Ansaar, where days drown in days, and where barbed wire is plunged into eyes, and where eyes are wider than Earth. Here starts the journey, the journey has started, our voices are rising, the barbed wire is rising, their bullets are rising... So when will you come friends? This concentration camp/city, tries to find forms of continued living. What matters is that the prisoners are trying to wait, and wait that there will be, at the end of the long tunnel of waiting, someone who will stand and wait for their return. So why do we distance ourselves from them, why do we forget them or pretend we forget them? We forget them because Fear has pushed people to live with the minimum standard of living, or below that, in the critical moment during the time of Occupation. We forget them because our internal wars are still devouring us and tearing at us. We forget them because massacres beget massacres, and because we are still living beneath the Slayer's knife. We forget them because the Death that invades us, so much of it that doesn't stop, wants to convert us into just ghosts living under the oppression of the occupation or fear of the occupation. We forget them because we have forgotten ourselves, we have forgotten our faces and our hands. And because we forget, and despite the fact that we forget, they do not forget. In Ansaar there are eyes, it is the camp of eyes hungry for Love and Liberty, in Ansaar there are arms that are still high, that lead their own Liberty and quest for Liberty. In Ansaar there are prisoners that are not confessed to be prisoners, human beings that are not considered human beings, in Ansaar all of you, and all of us in Ansaar... We used to enter with them the small tents, the low ones, and live daily humiliation, and we were left with only one choice, to make flags out of our shirts. And for us, we, and for those still outside the barbed wire surrounding Ansaar, so that it all doesn't become a big Lie... This Land is ours, and we will not allow it to become our killer prison... From Ansaar to Beirut, extends the tunnel of waiting; and from Ansaar to Beirut stand men, and their shadows extend and cover the whole of Lebanon, all of it..." Marcel Khalifeh
"Ansaar"
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