“Because You Are a Tame Bull” — Essam Khalifa on the Prison Built by Fear

 In “Because You Are a Tame Bull,” Dr. Essam Khalifa is not simply writing about a bull. He turns the animal into a mirror of the human condition: a being that possesses strength, yet becomes so accustomed to submission that obedience begins to feel natural, and a fence it could potentially break becomes a boundary it no longer dares to challenge.

Khalifa builds the poem around a stark contradiction. His bull sees itself as thoughtful and capable — able to find its way, channel water and pull the plough across the fields — yet it remains, above all, “tame.” Knowledge and strength are present, but neither is enough when fear has already persuaded the individual to accept the limits imposed upon him.

The poem moves through a landscape of pens, fences, whips, fields and bread, gradually transforming these everyday images into symbols of confinement and submission. The bull abandons what seems impossible, rejects confrontation and searches instead for a world that will not frighten it. Safety, however, comes at a price: the enclosure remains an enclosure, even if it is attached to a magnificent palace.

In the poem’s later passages, Khalifa sharpens the contrast between the tame bull and the companion who crosses into the open land. One stays behind the fence, dreaming and talking about freedom; the other runs, resists and accepts the consequences of defiance. Freedom is not portrayed as safe — the rebel may be hunted or even killed — but he remains capable of choosing his own path.

The poem ultimately arrives at its most forceful command: “Rebel.” Repeated like an awakening call, the word turns the poem from observation into confrontation. Khalifa leaves the reader facing one of its central paradoxes: what appears frightening may in fact be fragile, while fear itself can give power to the very thing that keeps us confined.

Because You Are a Tame Bull

Essam Khalifa

Because you are a tame bull,

you must learn to appease the windmills
until they grant you rest when morning comes,

when the noonday sun chews at you,

and when, at dawn,
you wear the colour of winter.

Because you are a tame bull...

Your destiny is skin, flesh and bone.

The whip of merchants drives you
toward degradation,

while your blood waters a land
that for a thousand years
has been covered
with the remains of your pure ancestors.

Because you are a tame bull...

You will convince yourself

that you are a great and thoughtful bull,

that you know how to break through the road,

that you know how to channel the waters,

and how to drag the ploughs across the fields,

drawing life upon the soil.

You will persuade yourself
that you possess a profound mind,

that something precious lives inside your head,

something that will complete
the noble face of humanity.

You will convince yourself...

never knowing that this precious thing
inside your mind

will be crushed
between two halves of a loaf of bread.

Because you are a tame bull...

You will abandon your impossible dreams,

reject the shape of violent struggle,

and retreat to the field
beside a poor hut.

You will gather your grass,

rest your head against the wall,

and search for a world
that does not frighten you.

You will remain surrounded
by the filth of the pen.

And that pen...

will always remain a pen,

even if they attach it
to a magnificent palace.

Inside it, you will fade,

break like a mirror splitting apart,

and wither
like autumn spreading across the land.

Because you are a tame bull...

You will sit behind the stubborn fence,

watching your companions at play
as the open country roars with laughter.

You will yearn for that distant horizon,

long to breathe the gentle breeze,

and sketch the freedom you desire.

You will speak of it,

declare your rejection
of the farmer's oppression,

lead a fragile gesture of defiance,

and release into the air
a little rebellion...

a little rebellion...

a little dialogue
that changes nothing.

While that companion of yours
out in the open country

will live free.

And even if they kill him,

he will die
in a fierce scene of pride.

That companion

will keep running
until life itself is over,

resisting
until the last of his blood is shed.

While you, the tame one,

will spend your life

arguing with that fence,

swallowing beneath the whip
the farmer's oppression,

until you perish...

beneath that fool's knife.

Because you are a threatened, tame bull,

you will fall in love
with the lingering taste of stillness.

You will refuse, under oppression,
to renew yourself.

You will fail to know
what deserves your fear
and what does not.

And you will deny a voice
that keeps calling you:

Rebel... rebel.

Rebel...

For what frightens you
may be fragile and weak.

And that which you do not fear...

may be terrifying...

terrifying.