When Man Cannot Remain Man, and: Ibn Batuta

When man cannot remain man

Actually I am not the manyou saw writhing on the ground.

Perhaps you saw me fleeingfrom pain towards sympathy.

When the times are bad, man cannot remain man. He, too,must have been a man like you and me. But

I can assure youhe was a total stranger, the oneyou also heardscreaming and screaming in the darkas he collapsed.

Perhaps at that desperate momentwhen I, like a frightened animal,left him alone and ran from danger to safety,

he like a trapped animal,turned vicious and bloodthirsty.

Ibn batuta

In the forests of MabarIbn Batuta wonders: who are these people    being impaled on bamboo stakes    their bodies dripping with blood?

  Is the morning dark—  or is the Sultan blind  and am I seeing through his sightless eyes  in the dim torchlight a flickering  page of history?  At this savage ceremony  who are those half-dead children, those lifeless women  whose hands and feet are being chopped off one by one?

    Kafirs? Or human beings? Who are    those all around me,    though forbidden by shariat,    who are drinking wine?

No one. Nothing.    All this is    a foul nightmare.

It is not happening now. It happened    a long time ago in history    when men were predators.

I am not a witness...    Sultan,    give me leave,    it is time for my namaz.