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“Great growth comes from loneliness. You have time to develop, dwell in your own mind and go a bit mad. All great people are a bit mad. That’s good to remember. Don’t escape it. 
Great growth comes from time spent in foreign lands, watching foreign people with foreign cultures. It makes you forget about your own land and race and town for a while. Great growth also comes from rooting yourself into one place from time to time. Unpack your bags, get a nice bed, a book shelf, some friends. Learn to show up, keep in touch, stick around. 
Growth comes in all sort of forms and shapes, everywhere at all times, and it’s yours to take and consume. Do what ought to be done. Here and now, to get you somewhere â€� anywhere.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“When you travel, the battered old suitcase only tells half the story...”
― Virginia Alison

“To the others, these accounts are about (one more) distant land, like (any other) distant land, without any discernable features in the narrative, (all the same) distant like any other.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

“Spices"
The scents of spices are sad
whether at home or in foreign lands ...
At home, they passes through the nose
to give a ray of hope,
a breathing space
that make us forget � albeit for a short while �
all about the chains of religions, gossip,
the absurdity of politics,
and the cruelty of the ruling classes �
At home, spices help us cope with
the heavy weight of the backbreaking
customs and traditions �
You see everyone excited to have a meal
that help them forget about
the hardships, the crises,
and the unsuitability of life at home �
In alienating foreign lands,
The scent of spices awakens everything that was lost,
including the lost lands and homes�
There is something unbearably sad about the image of a woman
Standing in a kitchen filled with scents of spices reminding her
of all that happened,
all that was possible,
all that should never have happened,
and of all the irreplaceable losses �
So many are the societies that have been
completely destroyed,
and of which nothing remains but scents of spices
that add flavor to foods
and marinate the wounds �
Could spices be like old songs?
We love them at home because
they touch wounds we wish we could heal from,
the same old songs break our hearts in foreign lands,
because by then we have finally learned
that exile doesn’t heal wounds,
but rather pushes the knife deeper into them �
And like the alienating foreign lands,
the scents of spices declare
that there is much more
to the story of the wound;
a story that kills if untold,
and doesn’t heal when narrated �

[Original poem published in Arabic on December 11, 2023 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako