Nora Armani: Exile

Click to hear the audio clip Exile read by the author, Nora Armani.

Once more an exile, an exile for all living memory.
Stuck to my genes, this state of mind,
like colour of hair, skin, mode and manner,
forms an integral part my being… other.

No civil wars, deportation, forceful displacements for me.
Handed down through generations, not racial though genetic,
This innate property is my dowry at birth.

I am a native exile

Copyright Nora Armani, 2004

This poem was recently published as part of the “Poet Tree Project”, a collaboration between Refugees and the Arts Initiative and the London Borough of Newham. It raises the profile of Refugee artists and art created by, for and with refugees and asylum seekers through poetry and literature. For more information visit: www.artsinititive.org.uk

It was also published in a recent anthology: Forgotten Genocides of the 20th Century, 2005 by Garod Books, UK.