“Assad el-Sahra”
Assad el-Sahra
I launch the YouTube App and type the phrase “Lion of the Desert” in the search box. The image of the old man catapults me into nostalgia, dips my head into a well of memory– about two and a half decades deep, and I behold the scenery of a man who strutted and fretted his life dragging men from the jaws of beasts till everything black on him became white; call it grey; call it eld; call it a powerful weakness that makes God becomes shy. I fetch the tears of a small me watching a boy in the screen – who is also shedding tears at the sight of a noose around the old man's neck. I exhume the small Qur'an he read as he stood firm on the gallows, it is still small as it was and carries the scents of his revered sweat. I exhume his eyeglasses that saw nothing at that point in time but the world beyond, that crashed on the floor as the noose stiffened his throat. I can still hear the echo of my voice asking God why He watched the infidels dismantled and disfigured what He created in His image, why He didn't stir them into ashes and let the wind blow them into evanescence like the black-and-white television I watched the movie through. I saw myself asking God then my father why the good ones die.
felling
the straightest trees . . .
summerhouse
[for Omar al-Mukhtar (1858–1931), the Libyan liberationist and freedom fighter also known as “Assad el-Sahra” meaning “Lion of the Desert”]
Taofeek Ayeyemi (fondly called Aswagaawy) is a Nigerian lawyer, writer and author of a Chapbook Tongueless Secrets (Ethel Press, 2021) and a full-length book "aubade at night or serenade in the morning" (Flowersong Press, TBD 2021). His works have appeared in Lucent Dreaming, Ethel-zine, artmosterrific, tinywords, The Pangolin Review, hedgerow, the QuillS, Modern Haiku, Frogpond and elsewhere. He won the 2021 Loft Books Flash Fiction Competition, Honorable Mention Prize in 2020 Stephen DiBiase Poetry Contest, among others. He is @Aswagaawy on Twitter.