Rabha The Sudanese Marathoner Poem by Dr. Ahmed Gumaa Siddiek

When the sun came down on the mountains
And all creatures crept to their heaths
And the roaring lions set out of their dens
And the birds were back to the trees

When the village fire was no longer burning
And the sleepy children climbed to their beds
When every couple to his dwell was returning
And the dogs in their huts hid their heads

When the African night crept like a ghost
And veiled with his dark sheet every place
Rabha stealthily left her home with a (post)
And out of the village she began the race

In the darkness of darkness she fled away
As lonely as a baby whose mother had lost
Through the dark forest she forced her way
And down the hills staggered with her post

As a hurricane she was fast to go
And her heart like a drum strongly beating
And her small feet the spaces were to mow
And the wind on her cheeks fiercely heating

She could hardly see her way as it was too dark
As no moon was there, the earth to light
And fear sharpened his teeth, a brutal shark
But Rabha was fearless and full of delight

(Pheidippides) much waters was said to wade *
For two days he did not stop to breathe
To Sparta he ran so fast to seek the aid
And Athena at last had won the wreath

So, Rabha did not fear the slimy things under her feet
She did not fear the lions roaring near in their dens
And she did not fear the hyena hunting for the meat

And she did not fear things skulking in the fens
But bravely ran from Funger to Gadeer
She defeated her fear and her human soul
She ran fast and fast like an African deer

She sold herself for a highly sacred goal
She ran over hill and vale and on the passage
Her face was full of happiness, as happiness should be
And in the early morning she came with the message

And those were the last words delivered to the Mahadi
'The enemy is approaching in heavy heaps of gun'
'With seventeen hundreds men with food and horse'
She uttered those last words and her soul was gone
And with those words she changed the history course

Rabha was the lesson we shall teach to our generation
She was the dream that the Turks could never ban
She was the symbol and the pride of the nation
Rabha was the song for every dame and man

She was the greatest heroine of our land
And the hope we have to plant on every sand