Rebuild

Ya baladi, your people did not forget you.

For 54 years we cried for you, crying to the world and carrying your story

Ya baladi, we have come to rebuild you.

From the Syrian's like me, stuck in the center of the empire

To the Syrian's forced to survive in refugee camps,

From the Syrian's besieged in exile,

To the Syrian's scared into silent cities,

We have all come to heal you.

Ya baladi, we are at your service.

My only wish is that I could write to you in your language, but I am humbled by the complexity of my mother tongue.

I will return soon, ya baladi, ya ahla balad, and once I have lived amongst my ancestors and taken my place on my land, I will write to you in Arabic and ascend amongst the Arab poets.

Ya baladi, your liberation has treated wounds I never knew I had, wounds that bled with the blood of the Syrians before me.

Akh, ya baladi, I have lived on a stranger's land for too long.

And although my memories with you, ya balad al yasmine, are old and faint, I have never forgotten you.

This thirst for freedom is a torch passed down from massacres before me

Any blood spilled on my land is the same blood that runs through my body

We did not forget what they did to you, ya baladi

Years ago, we promised to free you.

And when the whole world abandoned faith that we could liberate our land, the land of berries and pistachios, the land of the Byzantines and the Umayyads,

We marched in like the empires before us and broke open the dungeon doors imprisoning you with our own hands.

Forgive us for the wait,

Let us make it up to you, let us return and rebuild you.

Inshallah, ya baladi, I will see you soon.