Here and now, as I heed!
Can you hear the scattered silences
Of the old, old Rub’ al-Khali,
Whispering to the wind unseen?
This is where in honour’s code
Heroes of the hundred fights
Lived and perished as a fact,
In the light of joy, and melancholy.

 

The wind is ardent in its course,
It listens to the old, old Rub’ al-Khali.
Observe, the incessant song of the yellow sands!
Raising echoes of myriad-pasts:
Where alive to all things,
Among fair and foul,
In strength, stood,
The old, old Rub’ al-Khali.

 

As a dream ascertaining bliss,
Of magic birds and busy mirth,
Of lives in love of fair beliefs,
The old, old Rub’ al-Khali carries on
Whispering to the wind unseen.
Here and now, while I heed!
Can you hear the scattered silences
Of the old, old Rub’ al-Khali?

 

To close my eyes like a tired man,
I find it well to concentrate on:
The old, old Rub’ al-Khali –
The land of brave and free and fierce,
Where horizon is a sea of mirage,
Where men still gaze at stars,
And consider, ‘voyaging is victory’.
O, The Sacred, Sacred Rub’ al-Khali.

 

 

Dubai
5th February 2009

                          

Geeta Chhabra

 

From the book: An Indian Ode To The Emirates by Geeta Chhabra

Rub’ al-Khali is the Arabic name of the Empty Quarter, which is the huge desert in the middle of the Arabian peninsula, stretching from central Saudi Arabia in the north to Yemen in the south.