His experiences are very close to mine.
I recently read his book Zodiac of Echoes, which was an exploration of the worlds intermingling and the power of these connections. It addressed the idea of Hope and Prayer, the title originating from the astronomy of an ancient Libyan scholar. This Sufi scholar believed that prayers were sent up to the skies and some of them detached from there destination (heaven) and as a result these prayers spin around the zodiac "filling it with their echoes."
What could be more beautiful, sad, and inspiring than the idea that our prayers though unheard by God are somewhere in the stars singing!
I guess that I felt the need to explore his work further because honestly, though I tried, a lot of the time I felt I did not fully grasp what he was saying!
He exploits the use of voice extensively throughout the book. Contrasting differing voices and creating questions through those differing voices.
Some of his phrases are jarringly familiar:
So one enters a room alone.
People there and they see the dust
and they hear the echo of travel....
But that is not why I keep thinking
one life is not enough
or that I've lived enough.
Or:
I think I keep coming here
because there's no arrival,
and if I were to fall,
there would be no rescue,
because there was no damage
to begin with, ...
Travel and disconnection is connecting, because that is now the state of the world. Its amazing to think that everywhere I've gone, I find people like me! Not Arab, but displaced, exiled, travelers of the world.
And yes though there are people who are not there yet, the internet makes it more and more impossible to not be apart of that. I stand for what Mattawa stands for, a vastly fast shrinking world, that will clash and collide, but in doing so find the value of connections in the weirdest of places.
I leave you with a section from an Interview he gave about Globalization:
My first book of poems, "Ismailia Eclipse," has a lot of Libya in it, addresses an incident that happened in my childhood -- a hanging of dissidents that I saw that happened when I was about 12 or 13. That's a major event in my life, to be so frightened by this, and also to really decide that this is a regime that I will never forgive, and I will never cooperate with in anyway. Now it has informed my creativity, if you will, and I think it allowed me to be sympathetic. Being very Libyan and very touched by that experience has actually made me feel that one needs to act upon these situations and express them, and work one's art to address the tragedy that's happening to many other people all of the world. It hasn't made me a national writer, but maybe a more empathetic person and artist I hope. My last book was on the United States, and globalization, and the lost lives in some of the African states that are now actually contributing mercenaries to come and kill Libyans. So my sense of the collapse around the world of the nation state, and also of this economic system that fostered poverty and deprivation around the world, is coming to haunt us. If there is anything to be learned about Gadhafi, is that globalization is there, it's actually true, and whether it is the Wisconsin folks being inspired by Egypt, or the Libyans by their next door neighbor -- that's one good side perhaps of it -- but also with money, with capital, that goes unreported, we have somebody bringing mercenaries from Africa at the drop of a hat. He's got Serbian pilots and Ukrainian pilots. He's got Chinese bullets, American jeeps. We need to really keep an eye on the whole world because as much as the whole world is allowing us to operate within it, so are very evil people like Gadhafi. The world is theirs as well, and vigilantes and empathy are the way to go because we are really, really all connected, and I hope my poetry has contributed to that sense of connection
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