Asymptote

Scroll to Info & Navigation

We were sure our faces would live on
in your silver light, your tyrant frames

Deposit box—
with you, we fought against all we lost:
our youthful balance, valor,

our vigor, saved
for those aged days
soon to come

—Amal al-Jubouri

“Hagar Before the Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation, written by the Iraqi poet Amal al-Jubouri, translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell with Husam Qaisi is a collection about learning how to live in exile, when exile names not only the state of living as alien in another country, but as alien in one’s own country, now war-torn and plundered.” Read more in the January ‘12 issue of Asymptote.