The Forty-ninth Death

O Homs, I am the incoming death that You will know neither a shape nor a color for my coming…

I will come to you in the morning with the first sun brightness , in the afternoons and probably in the evenings. .. In all seasons with the blazing sun in Summer or with the bitter cold of winter, you will not escape me. I will come in the form of spring breeze or perhaps with hailstones. I will always come with a strong voice that uprooted human beings and stone as well.

I am the death that ambushed you.  Don’t ever be careful of me since care will not save you.

Wait for me every day in your closed lanes behind the high walls and in the closed streets, I will devour your children and your women and I will pursue your sons there to the fronts and battlefield to steal their lives.

I am your inevitable destiny. Homs, who were the lady of laugh and happiness has now become the Lady of Sorrows.. I will always dress you black and make your pretty flowers grow in small beds covering the graves of your children.

O majestic death, I am Homs. I offer you obeisance and loyalty

and I promise that I will not run away from you. Faith fills my heart. I’ve been created to die and this is the nature of life.

I want you to know that I am renewed at every moment. I am immortal and steadfast forever just like the firmness of the black stone in my ground. It is true that some of my roses died but their deaths have given life to the other flowers. Some of my branches are broken just to offer life to the other branches. I am as firm as time and place. As long as the sun shines you’ll find Homs present with its buildings and her sons…. every day people here offer a martyr and give birth to a militant resistant. Do not you know that we call the burial place of our beloved sons in Homs, “al-Fardous” which means Paradise.

We know that paradise is waiting for us as long as we are not afraid of death.

We don’t care that you come to us in our lanes or follow our sons, who defend their homeland, to the battle fields since we believe that life emerges from death.

Amal Farhat -From Homs to the Syria Times