The Lion

'April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.'

But it is not April and it was uncountable red winter flowers that burst their hearts and spilled their blood onto that awoken land

they ran with hope and fearlessness

and even the trees swayed to look at them in that winter called an Arab Spring

And in that moment

there was a wild celebration

and a revival of pride

of young men, of women not as sisters or girls or mothers but as themselves, of all that could happen, of film stars, of bellydancers, of belle epoque, of shaabi music, of the candyfloss seller and the homeless

Now

four years have gone

four splintered gates

of uncertainty

a grief for the young men, of women not as sisters or girls or mothers but as themselves, of all that could happen, of film stars, of bellydancers, of belle epoque, of shaabi music, of the candyfloss seller and the homeless

Revenge came with retribution

and the old hands took it like they were always going to take it

and a photograph of a lion found dead by the trash in Malhalla says everything

*First line taken from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot