An Ear On The Wall
By Abdushukur Muhammet Qumtur Translated By Munawwar Abdulla
As soon as we arrived
Our parents convinced us the walls had ears
It was only later that we realised everything else did, too.
The story was, as the elders said, mouths pressed to ears,
The youths we had grown up playing with
Had vanished one night as if abducted by jinn
They had been standing under a wall with ears.
Until the day we arrived in Sweden
We lived a thousand years per day surrounded by them.
There were no eared walls here
In fact, the people had none either
You may try to tell them something
On the streets and squares with loudspeakers
Yet no one listens
They did not believe that walls could have ears,
That there were ears around us.
But in the homes of Swedish Uyghurs
Every wall is covered with them
Carrying ears inside themselves, they had smuggled them in
From where they came from
Where they were from
If a person laughed they looked angry
If a person smiled they looked sarcastic
They believed the tea they drank and the food they ate had ears.
They were too anxious to dream, to think
Because they had ears on themselves, too
They could not live without them
They did not believe the Swedish walls had none
Unable to imagine an earless life,
Scared to death of standing below an earless wall
They lived. Eventually,
Part of them became an ear on the wall.
