An Anthology of Memory Filled Wrong

 An Anthology of Memory Filled Wrong`_

I was once a child worshipped by numbers.  

1986 - 1995. Those were the years.  

Champion. Champion. Champion.  

My trophies clinked like bells in a wooden cabinet,  

testifying that God once placed logic inside my head.

Then the sky collapsed.  

Mother went home early.  

Father and Mother, both only children,  

a lineage with no branches.  

No twigs to hold on to.  

No family tree to present.

And poverty...  

poverty is the judge that drops the gavel fastest.  

"This is free," it said.  

So I was dragged to the only door that asked for no payment:  

The House of God that also served as a school.

I entered.  

Not because of a calling.  

But because my stomach demanded to be filled.

Time was cut into tiny pieces.  

From the first call to prayer until the last prayer of the night.  

My brain was made into a library.  

Not a library that creates.  

But a library that memorizes.

Page after page of scripture copied into my head.  

With the ruler of discipline.  

With the eraser of doubt.  

I was trained to become a walking encyclopedia.  

Fluent in recitation, but blunt in creation.

Imagine...  

a brain, as vast as an ocean, filled with only one kind of fish.

I do not accuse God.  

Did He not also write equations across the sky,  

make atoms dance in nature,  

place algorithms in the veins of a leaf?

What I accuse is man  

who plays God  

through the curriculum given to poor children.

O you rulers in nations that pray,  

hear this silent wail.

Do not make religion the only life vest  

for children drowning in poverty.  

That vest may save a life,  

but it cuts off the wings.  

It leaves the future empty.

Fill their time not only with memorization,  

but also with experimentation.  

Not only with prayer,  

but also with data.  

Not only with the promised heaven,  

but also with the earth that must be built.

Today I see children getting free meals.  

I am grateful.  

But I am also afraid.  

Because if their minds are still filled the same way,  

then 30 years from now there will be another me.  

Sitting in a corner of the world,  

writing poems about "what if".

What if there had been a laptop then,  

maybe I’d be typing alongside Elon Musk.  

What if there had been a laboratory then,  

maybe I’d be tinkering with science.  

What if there had been a choice then,  

maybe my name would be in a journal,  

not in a WhatsApp prayer group.

Make me a monument.  

A monument of warning.  

That a nation that only produces memorizers  

will lose to a nation that produces creators.

That faith without knowledge  

is a ship without a captain.  

And knowledge without faith  

is a captain without a compass.

Because God does not need robots of memorization.  

God needs caliphs who can think.

And I...  

I am only the leftover of a system  

too diligent in filling memory,  

and too lazy to open the future.

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