What We Speak Becomes the House We Live In

Dear Andréa, 

I have long wondered why I cannot write a poem of this landscape, of the interior of my homeland and I realised it is because I am no countries flag bearer, a symbol of ownership, of conquered kingdom come. I am a stranger in this landscape like many. There is an unanswered question of sovereignty that looms on each street corner, hanging on each street name.

The people of this land had no flags, no gun powder and no uniform or brass regalia. They had their language born of the landscape, the trees, the wood and the wind, attuned to this ancient land. They had their song, their dance, their dreaming. What restorative gesture can undo what is tantamount to cultural genocide? Once those who came from the shipyards and prisons of England struggled to survive in this hostile foreign savage landscape and now the tables have turned their songs silent.

Those who set anchor conquered with their words, laid claim to the untruth of an uninhabited landscape. Although generations later born and bred they are immigrants themselves like me, they are strangers set in this landscape. They have built a nation state on their acts formed on dispossession. There are a few growing swollen off the red dust. They have created this seemingly endless nadascape of autosuburban realities, a skyline forged on banalities. They have given foreign names to the ears of this dispossessed landscape. Collectively sing the song “que será, sera.”

The Persian mystic poet Hafiz wrote, 'What we speak becomes the house we live in'. Seemingly a young sunburnt country. Yet this land is old, it is ancient but dressed in their clothes not of animal skin and painted ochre but of bitumen, concrete and red brick.

The language belongs to the land born of the people by the sea, the Gadigal. This land has not heard its elders speak the language of the Eora Nation for so long. The Gadigal people and their words born of the earth, the rocks and the water, the country and lands of the Boree, Garungal, Car-rang-gel, Cooroowal, Wulworrá-jeung, Turranburra, Woggan-ma-gule, Cookaroo, Yarrandabby Ku-bung hárrá, Kubungarra. Let the voices of the poetry of this dispossessed people's land ring out over the tiled pitched red rooftops. Let them reclaim this lands song, this lands poetry. Let it echo over the tree tops in harmony with the bird song, lost so long ago.

Yours Faithfully

Fayroze