“The poem is neither here nor there, and with a girl's breastit can illuminate the nights.With the glow of an apple it fills two bodies with lightand with a gardenia's breath it can revive a homeland!”

“Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?”

“Where can I write my latest account of the body's incarnation?It's the end of what was bound to end! Where is that which ends?Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?”

“The poem is in my hands, and can run stories through her hands.”

“If there must be a moon, let it be high,a high moon made in Baghdad, neither Arab, nor Persian,nor claimed by the goddesses all around us.”

“The boy went back to his family there, in the distance, in a distance he did not find there in the distance. My grandfather died counting sunsets, seasons, and heartbeats on the fingers of his withered hands. He dropped like a fruit forbidden a branch to lean its age against. They destroyed his heart. He wearied of waiting here, in Damur. He said goodbye to friends, water pipe, and children and took me and went back to find what was no longer his to find there. Here the number of aliens increased, and refugee camps got bigger. A war went by, then two, three, and four. The homeland got farther and farther away, and the children got farther and farther from mother's milk after they had tasted the milk of UNRWA. So they bought guns to get closer to a homeland flying out of their reach. They brought their identity back into being, re-created the homeland, and followed their path, only to have it blocked by the guardians of civil wars. They defended their steps, but then path parted from path, the orphan lived in the skin of the orphan, and one refugee camp went into another. ”

“In a world that has no heaven the earth becomes an abyss.And the poem is one of its consolation prizes.One of the qualities of the winds, north or south”