Oh People Of The Tent

Photo by Mohammad Al-Sawalhi

Oh people of the tent, you wake to rain gnawing at your feet, to puddles collecting the night’s cold breath. They say rain is a blessing but here, it sounds like a verdict. You wake in mud because someone decided you didn’t deserve floors. You queue for bread because someone decided your hunger was strategic. You bury your dead in pieces because someone decided your grief takes up too much space. »They call you displaced, as if a storm swept you here, as if tents grow naturally from razed neighbourhoods, from bulldozed homes, from the bureaucratic cruelty.« x2

There is no accident in this, no tragedy of weather. This is a world arranged so that your sleepless nights guarantee someone else’s comfort. Your deprivation is engineered, your suffering is policy, and the worst truth of all: those of us with walls and roofs live inside the architecture that crushes you, even when we claim to mourn you.