The music group “OD ensem­ble”, or to give it its full name, “Orta’k Dogu” is back in the news offer­ing a touch­ing song about refugees, or rather, as spo­ken by refugees.

The Turk­ish name of the group is a word­play on “Mid­dle East” and “Com­mon East”. They aspire to liv­ing togeth­er in a Mid­dle East shared by its mosa­ic of peo­ples. The name of the group already hints at its com­po­si­tion. Its mem­bers are grouped around Tarık Aslan, a Syr­i­an musi­cian cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Istanbul.

I par­tic­u­lar­ly wish to share a num­ber that moved us at Kedis­tan: “Mül­te­ci Makamı”, (Migrant Mâqam).

The song’s lyrics and music are by Hus­sain Hajj’a. The final part, in Turk­ish, is aimed at the peo­ple attack­ing refugees in Turkey, as Rabia Mine wrote in her lat­est arti­cle, “In Syr­ia, Turk­ish sol­diers are get­ting killed all the time and, every time, rather than ques­tion­ing what the Turk­ish army is doing over there, Turk­ish peo­ple aim their anger at Syr­i­an refugees who fled the war.”

The video is sub­ti­tled in Eng­lish but for the full irony in the text, think in these terms:

in your squares, streets and avenues
if we are beg­gars, we offer our apologies

in your work­places, work­shops and fields
if we work ille­gal­ly, we offer our apologies

if our corpses hit your shores, coasts or beaches,
we offer our apologies

Who am I to com­plain, may the gods pre­serve me
we are drown­ing in croc­o­dile tears

I am just a refugee


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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Naz Oke
REDACTION | Journaliste 
Chat de gout­tière sans fron­tières. Jour­nal­isme à l’U­ni­ver­sité de Mar­mara. Archi­tec­ture à l’U­ni­ver­sité de Mimar Sinan, Istanbul.