When the Italians attacked his village, they burnt down the houses and poured concrete in the well. They marched him and his family, along with the rest of the villagers, 400 kilometres to the infamous El-Agheila concentration camp. Being forbidden pens and paper, he composed a thirty-stanza-long poem that he committed to memory. It was memorized by others and that way spread across the country. It so fortified the spirit of resistance that when the Italians uncovered the identity of its author they whipped him. The poem is called “I Have No Illness But.” It opens: I have no illness but
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