I Refuse to Take Your Brotherly Hand
Your nails are black with dirt, brother, and your palms are clammy with seat. I refuse to take the hand you extend to help. I shall not join hands with you brother, for unclean hands make me uneasy. For filthy fingernails rob me of my pride.
You argue, gesticulating with your once impeccably clean and beautiful hand that, before long, it shall not matter for "everybody" is delving and digging and all shall have hands dripping with dirt. That nobody shall know what clean hand looks like and there shall be comfort in the dirty crowd and enough to eat for there are good yields when the stinking manure is well dug in with strong and bad hands in times.
Are you blind, brother?
I asked how many have the sludge or the strong and bold hand like yours dug and delved. Brother, the hands of many are too weak with hunger and for many the sludge is out of reach, and yet for others, the stink is too nauseating, but all have eyes and hunger fill them with dirt as they watch your fingernails fill with dirt.
I have seen hungry, envious eyes watching silently through chain-link fence. I have seen eyes in deep sunken sockets with anger intently watching you. I have send parched mouths water with saliva, and heard the rumbling of hollow empty stomachs as they watched you feed the dog with meat from heavy yields of the city sludge.
Have you entirely forgotten, brother, the fragrance and comfort of clean hands? The confidence, the peace you have when you know you'll leave no ugly smudge on the sheet? Don't you remember the repulsion you had when you shook hands with fat, dirty men with their dirty clammy palms?
Let me alone brother and from the top of the cliff, don't offer me your dirty hand in help. Let me trudge the long way up for the short cuts are solid and slippery, your palms are clammy with the sweat of fear and your fingernails are dogged with dirt.
- Elizabeth Awel Garang Looch
