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From Haifa to Near Faraway Cairo

I recall the velvet sugar-cane juice
 we drank together
 with the smooth blue air
 under the open skies,
 the sunflower seeds
 we cracked together
 with jokes
 echoing laughter in the sun.
 How sweet the roasted sweet-potatoes
 were in those rainbow days
 of pretty sugar dolls.
 But unlike you dear Kadreya,
 Friend of my sunny schooldays,
 I was told I was just
 a visiting guest
 though born in the land of the Nile.
 Ordered by Egypt my Jewish wings
 to spread
 to search for a new nest,
 I have found it on Mount Carmel
 and here I mean to stay.
 My foremost wish today
 is our soldier sons
 to bathe
 in the peaceful rays
 their mothers wove
 when younger than they
 in the near faraway
 Rainbow days.
                       Ada Aharoni
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Ada Aharoni is an Israeli poet, writer and professor. Ada was born in Cairo, lives in Haifa, and is  President of IFLAC: PAVE PEACE, the International Forum for Literature and Culture of Peace. She writes in Hebrew and English, and her works have been translated into Arabic. Ada Aharoni sent a letter and the poem "From Haifa to Near Faraway Cairo to Egyptian President Sadat in 1977. This poem prompted Sadat to say, in his November 1977 address to the Israeli parlaiment (Knesset): "Let us make the poem a reality."

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