Konya Shamsrumi

The heart of a poet is wild and free and even if he lives in Africa or Europe or in the desert and savannah belt, the compass grows fingers to point at every angle at the same time because what we know to be time is only a flirting naked woman or raised muscles of a man through ink and dreams.

We laughed. We joked. We lamented. We remembered books and plots and characters. We talked about the creativity that is needed to write a voice driven novel. We talked about A Brief History of Seven Killings, and the distinct voices of the characters.  And when we reached Kabuga junction, we hugged and parted. I crossed the road, and took the shortcut through Kofar Kabuga, the old Kofar Kabuga, with its few heaps of sand that survived the wear and tear of time, and a goat, resting on its ancient back. 

It isn’t that I have never written a poem in the absence of melancholy. I have. But there is a way melancholy pokes into your soul; it makes you feel things; it lifts the curtain over your eyes and makes you see the world with vivid alacrity. There is a way it sequestrates the feelings out of you and turns them into words. There is a way melancholy does these that joy simply doesn’t know how to. Melancholy is poetry’s favorite child.

...a refugee camp is a safe place from war and persecution. But it is also a place of dependency on international organizations, of unemployment and frustrations, of misery and stigmatization.