Amina Of The Sand: A Migration Lament - a Multi-Voiced Poem In Five Parts Poem by Akwu Sunday Victor

Amina of the Sand: A Migration Lament

A multi-voiced poem in five parts

I. Amina
Zamfara, my cradle of dust and dreams

I was twelve when Mama said,
'Go find gold in Libya's belly.'
But I carried no gold
just hope,
Wrapped in nylon, knotted tight.

The man with cracked lips and city shoes
Said, 'You'll sweep floors in Europe, maybe school.'
But I swept through deserts instead,
Beneath suns that burned names off bones.

They gave us water like secrets
just enough to hush our tongues.
I saw Fatima fall asleep in the sand,
but she never woke.

My name is Amina.
But they called me cargo,
called me investment,
called me disposable girl.

II. The Smuggler
No name. No face. Just profit.

He counted girls like goats.
Amina was number seventeen.
She had eyes like waiting wells,
but he had no time for poetry.

In Agadez, he sold silence and fear.
He taught children to walk by moonlight,
to drink sweat when water fled.
And when they died, he buried dreams, not bodies.

To him, Amina was a receipt
already half-paid.
She would fetch double in Sabha,
where men don't ask names.

III. The Desert Wind
Witness of centuries. Keeper of bones.

I saw her.
Amina, child of millet and mango rains.

She cried for her mother in Hausa,
then cried in silence.
She kissed a photo till it turned to dust.

I swept sand across her footsteps,
hid her tears in dunes.
I whispered lullabies of vultures
and old bones that used to sing.

She is not the first.
She will not be the last.
But every child I bury
curses the sky differently.

IV. Amina's Mother
In Zamfara, watching the stars lie

You sent her with prayers and wrapper money.
You believed the man when he said,
'She'll be a nurse, she'll be rich.'

Now, you sit by the radio.
You ask Alhaji Musa,
'You don hear from Libya? '
But the line is dry.

At night, you boil water with no food.
You see her in dreams,
dusty, barefoot,
running but never reaching.

You gave birth to a bird,
but the sky devoured her wings.

V. God
Neither male nor female. Just listening.

I was there.
When Amina crossed the border
of innocence and betrayal.

I heard her prayer in a cracked whisper
not in Arabic, but in soul.

When the traffickers laughed,
when the guards turned away,
I wrote her name in stars.

You ask where I was
I was the breath she held.
The tears that carved her cheek.
The last 'Mama' before the silence.

Epilogue
A desert holds more than sand. It holds secrets.
Amina now walks with ancestors
young, betrayed, and burning still.
And every girl from Zamfara who dreams of flight,
should ask first:
'Which wings, and who holds the sky? '
'The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.'

Let us not bury Amina twice, once in sand, once in silence.
Let her name be a drumbeat in policy halls,
a fire in pulpits,
a grief that refuses to be forgotten.