Should people eat sand or clay out of hunger?
In our stories,
grandmothers have enough anecdotes
in which mothers would put stones in a boiling pot
the sound would act as lullaby
for screaming bellies
and put their children to sleep
Let me rephrase the question.
should people eat sand or clay out of desperation?
modern doctors would discourage
ancient priests would mock
but history
history is full of such emptiness
let’s just turn dust-thick pages
of forgotten famines,
of bodies never buried,
when earth was the only thing
that opened its mouth
as the world closed its doors.
In Bengal,
they chewed silt
smaller than sand, larger than clay,
mothers fed mud to children
their mistake?
they mistook it for rice.
they both lied.
Shouldn’t hunger differentiate between lies?
In Haiti,
they turned sand into cookies
sand texture was different from Bengal
more salty and fat
they baked it under the same sun
that watched empires rise.
In Americas,
enslaved men bent to the ground
in search of iron in red clay
the only thing the master did not take.
In Palestine,
where war ate first,
and the children ate last.
isn’t stone less cruel than emptiness?
Since antiquity,
the sand remembers
the taste of our desperation.
Even Hebrew Bible said so-
man comes from dust
and returns to dust!
But between coming and going
should man eat sand too?
Yes
Children in Gaza are eating sand
burying our conscience in their belly
only to metamorphose into sand.
