Me:

I realized it.
I already knew it.
As a kid, I already felt it. But somehow… I never really touched it.
But now I do. As my mother gave birth to me, as I legally came into existence.
As I learn to speak and ears let me understand the outer word, I was told:
“You are a Muslim”.
I was, am and pray to stay a Muslim.
Then, I heard some Arabic words, words I did not understand. My father translated it to me:
“Write down, I am an Arab”.
And I was an Arab. I grow up, read some a bit and travel sometime. In Andalusia, I walked
through the magnificence of what my ancestor had built. My head was as high as it could be.
That belonged to me, it was me. I was an Andalusian.
However, as the bombs struck our people, killed my brother, injured my sister, I was
saddened. How could we let that happen, me the Andalusian, we the Arabs?
Where was our pride?
Where was our determination?
And then some worlds were repeated, some familiar world, prefect words, revealed words,
calming word. The horrible images became my pride. The eyes of the sufferer had this light.
That light, that light, was my pride. That light was not the, the greatness of the Andalusian or
the pride of Arabs.
No! I already saw that light. In Turkey, in Syria, not long ago.
It was something else, something I was. It was what I was.

The Alhambra could burn, I would not care.
The poet was wrong. Don’t write I am an Arab in my passport.
Write! And this is an order!
I am a Muslim.
The beauty of this statement is not the fact that I made it.
But that it was pronounced by the Lips of the best Creature of The Majestic as He stands on
Mount Arafat.