The poetic script of ما كان

Created as a student film assessment, ما كان translates verse directly into visual language. Rather than following a conventional narrative screenplay, the film is guided by a central poem that explores memory, dislocation, and the deep feeling of belonging to a homeland.

The foundational verse

The written poem serves as both the narrative spine and emotional anchor for the entire project. Every shot was conceived to match the cadences, silence, and evocative imagery within each line, translating literary emotion directly onto the screen.

POEM:

Listen, my friend, the martyr who left us too soon,

The same mistake returns beneath the same moon.

We walk again the very same road,

Still digging through what we’ve carried and owed.

As if all these years of war taught us nothing at all,

Thirty years of fear, yet we still watch the walls.

The war returns to us, finds a way to play,

And the youth are still falling, day after day.

We hear once again the sound of the shells,

And everyone blames everyone, as the madness swells.

The wounds return, while the country turns blind,

To all of the scars it has left behind.

“Did the wind come to take us away?

Are those who left still not enough today?”

We tasted the bitter cup, we cried at the crossing,

We missed the touch of our hands, the closeness we’re losing.

We miss the outlines, the touch of a hand,

We miss those crossings, that feeling of land.

And they laugh at the people who speak from the stands,

I wish you could visit and hear with your hands.

They’ve been away, asleep in a country like paradise,

While we remain here, paying the price.

Tell them, O People, wake up and return to those days,

Now we must wake up, before the country decays.

In a country where peace is something we sell,

No one asks about home, and everyone lives in fear as well.

Every person opens a shop just to trade in divide,

O world, all religions were made to make us stand side by side.

We hate the human being, then hide behind faith,

Our hearts have turned to iron, and we learned nothing from the past’s weight.

My friend, the martyr, I fear it was all too soon,

That all you gave for us left us with no boon.

Your daughter became a woman, now over twenty years old,

Still asking, “Where is my father?” a story never told.

I say Your father fell in battle, defending what he believed,

The enemy was the threat, and he died as we grieved.

She said, “What freedom is this? What do I need from the enemy?”

Yesterday, at my graduation, my father wasn’t there with me.

And now they want war again, to return us to the past,

When will this cycle ever stop, how long can it last?

My friend, the martyr, I fear you left us for naught,

Why don’t the children laugh when fear is all we’ve fought?

My country, the fairest flower, that everyone wants to pluck,

Yet every hand that reaches leaves you shattered by its touch.