Ayt Azɣa (People of Sand) - Poem - Noah Lakehal
Ayt Azɣa (People of Sand)
My great grandmother’s face etched with stories,
Tattoos tracing lines of her journey,
Like desert dunes shifting with time.
A symbol of strength, each mark a path overcome,
Now, those symbols fade in the shadow of new tongues.
Tamazight slips from our mouths, replaced by foreign words,
As sands of Arabisation bury our past.
We were never one place
We are the breath of the Sahara,
The pulse of the Atlas Mountains,
People bound by abrid - the path of wind, water, and sun.
Taught to forget,
To look through the eyes of those who came with their own maps,
Unsuited to our akal - land,
Incompatible with the united rhythm of North Africa’s heart.
Sporadic rains arrive seldom,
As the desert continues to claim,
Its hunger fed by pollution not our own.
More than ever the golden haze of the sand and sky melt into one
Yet we remain,
Our hands working the soil,
Tradition woven into each grain of sand.
We raise our goats, our lambs with bare hands,
Using all, wasting nothing,
For to live here is to honour what we have.
We are the free people, Amazigh,
Desert secrets ingrained in our culture
But when they cast our stories,
In their movies,
Depicted as the Fremen of Dune
We are left out, our voices silenced,
Our wisdom forgotten in the backdrop of their tales.
Still, we thrive,
Not as they see us, but as we are.
Resilient in the face of conquest,
Our azri – roots as deep as the olive trees,
That scatter our lands.
Date palms stretch their arms wide,
Offering sweetness from the sun.
Figs, pomegranates, olives
These are the gifts of our land,
Nurtured by the hands that shape the jessours,
Channels of life carved into sand.
Olive oil, once abundant, now rare like gold,
A price too high for many.
Yet we endure,
Raising our lambs and goats from birth,
Our lives weaved into theirs
Honouring their spirits with each meal.
In our world, nothing is wasted,
For to waste is to deny the desert its due.
Our homes, once built from the gypsum,
Held the cool of the night and the warmth of the sun.
Now, they crumble under the weight of westernisation,
Replaced by walls that cannot breathe.
Yet even in the ruins of the Ksour,
Wisdom lingers.
Sustainability, once forgotten,
Now sought after,
As the world turns its eyes back to what we knew all along.
The desert taught us to build with tassawt - care,
To shape our lives with what the land offers,
For the land always remembers,
Even when we forget.
I wonder,
How much have we lost in the name of progress?
Modernisation came at a cost,
A cost too high for a land so ancient, so wise.
The UN speaks of sustainability,
Of meeting today’s needs without compromising tomorrow.
But we, the Amazigh, have always known this truth
It is written in the stones,
In the wind,
In the way we live with tanemirt – our gratitude for the land,
Not against it.
If only they had listened,
Perhaps the future would look more like the past.
Language index (Tamazight – Language of the Amzigh – Indigionous people of North Africa):
Akal - Land and Soil
Azri – Meaning roots, cultural roots and the importance of staying traditional and maining sustainable practises
Tassawt – Preservation and care
Tanemirt – Gratitude, in the context of what the land provides
By Noah Lakehal
References (background reading):
Anon n.d. Amazigh in Algeria. Minorityrights.org. [Online]. [Accessed 27 October 2024]. Available from: https://minorityrights.org/communities/amazigh/.
Drury, S. 2024. ‘dune 2’ criticized for lack of Middle Eastern and North African inclusion and influences: ‘A missed opportunity.’ Variety Daily. [Online]. [Accessed 27 October 2024]. Available from: https://variety.com/2024/film/news/dune-2-criticism-middle-east-north-african-inclusion-1235946027/.
Faiza, N. 2023. Sustainable practices: Learning about Tunisia’s Amazigh Community. Solimar International. [Online]. [Accessed 27 October 2024]. Available from: https://www.solimarinternational.com/sustainable-practices-learning-about-tunisias-amazigh-community/.
Lane, E. 2011. After Gaddafi, Libya’s Amazigh demand recognition. BBC. [Online]. [Accessed 27 October 2024]. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16289543.
McCabe, C. n.d. The Disappearing Tradition of Amazigh Facial and Body Tattoos. Moroccoworldnews.com. [Online]. [Accessed 27 October 2024]. Available from: https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2019/04/269903/tradition-amazigh-facial-tattoos.