I AM

I Am

by Baba Kateb Nuri-Alim Shunnar

I am.

Not just a name, not just a breath, not just a traveler through days that rise and fall like tides in the soul.

I am the hush before my grandmother’s prayer.

I am the way her hands moved through rice and memory.

I am the barefoot boy beside still waters, listening to catfish hum gospel songs beneath the reeds.

I am every syllable that rose in smoke from my grandfather’s pipe as he stared past the horizon, talking to God with his silence.

I am what they left behind

and what they carried forward in me.

I am the child of Marva, a woman sculpted from faith and fire.

She didn’t need a cathedral, she was one

Built on sacred struggle, built on sacred strategy, built on strength that broke not under the weight of storms but danced in them.

I watched her move like a sermon in motion,

Speaking truths in rooms that tried to pretend she had no place in them.

And I knew

If her tongue could part doubt like Moses parted seas,

Then I too was born with oceans inside me.

I am Celestine’s shadow,

The echo of her “yes child” when my soul doubted itself.

Her rhythm is still in my steps.

Her recipes live in my bones.

Her knowing became my knowing

That there are some things you don’t learn with the mind,

But remember with the spirit.

I am not just my past

I am the river it became.

Flowing through forgotten stories and remembered names.

I speak with my pen, but it is the drum that speaks through me.

The djembe of the ancestors,

The string of the kora in the hands of the griot,

The fire circle where elders said, “listen,” and I did

Not just to words,

But to the silence between them.

I am.

The soil of Timbuktu in my feet,

The gold dust of Ghana in my dreams,

The starlight of Ethiopia in my chest,

The Nile in my memory, the Sahara in my scars.

And I am Rumi

Because the soul is not bound by birth,

And longing is a language older than geography.

I too have danced drunk on divine wine,

Spun in circles, searching for the Beloved,

Only to find Her seated deep within my ribcage.

Every time I wept,

The tears baptized me again.

Every time I broke,

The crack became a window for God’s light.

I too whispered,

“What you seek is seeking you.”

And found that to seek at all is to already be found.

I am Birago Diop

The one who reminded us: “The dead are never gone.”

His breath is in my sentences,

His wisdom in my pauses,

His truth in my truth.

I write so the flame never dies.

So the ancestors speak through fresh ink.

I am Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

I reclaim our tongues and stories,

I rebel against forgetting.

Every word I place upon the page is a seed of resistance,

A declaration that we were, we are, and we shall always be.

I wear language like armor and balm.

I am Ben Okri

Wading through the dreamwaters between seen and unseen.

I paint reality with colors unseen by the waking world.

I speak with the spirit tongue,

Where metaphors carry medicine and myth carries memory.

I am the child of stories that never die.

I am Amadou Hampâté Bâ

Preserver of soul,

Messenger of spirit,

Keeper of African breath.

The whisper of the elders is never far from my ear,

Because I don’t just write

I remember.

And what I remember, I offer.

What I offer, I protect.

These ancestors are not shadows behind me.

They live in me

Their wisdom in my fingers,

Their prayers in my heartbeat.

They walk with me when I rise,

They hold me when I fall,

They speak through me when I sit to write.

I am a continuation.

I am a thread in the holy fabric.

I am a temple of echoes,

An altar built of every voice that came before mine.

I am an ancestral writer.

I write not for fame, but for flame.

I write not to be heard, but to be held by the divine.

I write because somewhere, a soul is weary,

And these words will be their rest.

I write because somewhere, a child is searching,

And these stories are a mirror.

I write because the ancestors are still speaking,

And I am their willing page.

I am the breath between prayers.

I am the silence in meditation when the ego has finally left the room.

I am the wind that speaks when I walk alone and feel surrounded.

I am the voice that once said beneath a willow tree,

“Trust Me.”

And that voice was not apart from me

It was me,

Remembering I am never apart from the Creator.

I am not broken

I am blessed in places they don’t see.

I am not lost

I am being led in ways they can’t hear.

I am not empty

I am pouring myself into the cracks of this world,

And wherever my essence touches,

Something holy blooms.

I am not greedy for things

I hunger for soul.

I do not pray for more

I thank for what is.

And in that gratitude,

I am rich beyond measure.

I am.

Not because of what I do,

But because of who I always was

A whisper from the womb of the universe.

A sigh spoken by the Creator.

A flicker of divinity wrapped in flesh,

Walking through storms not to be destroyed

But to remember I carry the rain inside me.

I am.

I am Rumi.

I am Birago Diop.

I am Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

I am Ben Okri.

I am Amadou Hampâté Bâ.

I am the mother’s prayer,

The grandmother’s wisdom,

The child’s laughter,

The elder’s song.

I am the hands of the universe holding themselves.

I am a page turning in God’s great book.

I am what remains after everything else falls away

Love,

Light,

Stillness.

I am Baba Kateb Nuri-Alim Shunnar.

And I am.