Di Baladna

The Sudanese-American slam-poetry champion and human-rights activist Emtithal Mahmoud shares an extract from her rousing poem ‘Di Baladna’ (Arabic for ‘our land’), which she recited at last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow. Inspired by conversations she had with Nigerian, Syrian and Rohingya refugees and people in camps in Cameroon, Jordan and Bangladesh, the lines call for immediate action to protect future generations from the consequences of climate change.

If this land could speak, would she thank us, praise us, would she ridicule us, or beg us? would her voice be weary, gentle, disdainful?

Would it shake with sorrow, with rage? I used to wonder about these things all the time.

At 11 years old, I watched my neighbor’s house crumble before my eyes The flood waters washed away the earth and clay most people used to build their homes To see her wade through her home like that, to watch her try to salvage what little she had left Our country was already locked in turmoil and now the earth began to purge us too.

If you could stop the next tornado from hitting your home, the next hurricane from wiping out your city, the next drought from starving your people, the next lightning strike from ending your life wouldn’t you?

The locusts in the Horn of Africa, the floods of South Sudan, the ice in Chicago, the fires in California, Australia. The threat of rain that won’t stop or rest, that won’t come.

We are at the precipice of possible change A turning point that can and will defines us.

Fire or ice, how will the world end? I don’t know and I don’t want to find out not in our generation, and not in the next.