The exile was a poetic idea in the poetry I wrote in Iraq, an existential sensation about expatriation in time and other people. I explored the complexity, the mix of feelings about birth and death, love and departure, pain and pleasure, the maze and the horizon.

Later, exile became reality, my daily fate. And the experience of being an exile permeated everything, excluding me from language, making me a stranger in train stations, airports, motorways and winding forest roads. It changed the way I looked at everything and everybody from the faces of policemen to the visa stamps in my passport.

And my wife and son were victims of my exile: like two trees I tried to plant them, without success. And this failure confused me. The further away I moved from my homeland the more I began to imagine I was perhaps on my way home once again. Talking about home and reading about home replaced being there.

Now I am on the threshold of returning to my homeland for the first time in twenty-seven years. When I left, for strange, unknown lands, I did not expect anyone to welcome me. Always, I told myself that one day I would return home and there receive a warm welcome. Now that my return is approaching I wonder, with so many of my family and friends dead or gone, who will open the door when I knock at it, and who will be there to welcome me.

Copyright © 2007 Nabeel Yasin. All rights reserved.

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