By: Khalil Gibran
Translated by: Bajram Karabolli
Were you born in the cradle of pain and raised in the lap of misfortune and in the house of tyranny? Am I eating a stone-hard loaf of bread, simply soaked in your tears? Are you a soldier that the heavy law of man forces you to abandon your wife and children and throw yourself on the battlefield to protect the Babe that your rulers, lying, call Duty? Are you a poet content with the crumbs of life, happy with your parchment and ink, who lives as a stranger in his own country, unknown to his people? Are you a prisoner shackled in a dark cell for some trivial offense and condemned by those who try to remake man by destroying him? You are a young girl, whom God has blessed with the gift of beauty, but you are the victim of the abuse of the rich man who deceived you and bought your body, but not your heart, and abandoned you in misery and misfortune? If you are any of these, then you are a martyr to the law of man. You are a wretch, and your misfortune is the result of the malice of the strong and the injustice of the tyrant, of the violence of the rich and the selfishness of the lewd and the greedy.
Take courage, my suffering loved ones, because behind this material world is a Great Power, a Power that is all justice, mercy, compassion and love!
You are like a flower that grows in the shade; the gentle breeze picks up and carries your cores to the sunlight, where you will live in beauty again.
You are like the bare tree that bends under the winter snow. Spring will come and cover you with the lively purchase of its garments! And Truth will tear the veil of tears that covers our breeze! I am taking it within myself, O sorrowful brothers, I love you and despise your oppressors!
