A refugee from Baghdad

Then one day, men with serious moustaches came knocking on our door. Would my father care to join them for a little chat? Mum’s face grew ashen as the hours passed slowly and Dad hadn’t returned. I knew something was wrong, but no one, not my mother, nor my grandmother, would tell me why Dad was suddenly taken away.

In today’s Guardian newspaper, Snakeskin poet Hassan Abdulrazzak writes about his childhood in Baghdad, and the reasons why his family became refugees, eventually settling in England: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/20/baghdad-refugee-saddam-iraq-hassan-abdulrazzak

The experience of leaving Iraq has also been described in his poems, for example in  ‘The Shadow of their Former Selves’, which appeared in Snakeskin back in 2001: http://www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk/67form~1.htm

Hassan’s play, Love, Bombs and Apples is at the Arcola theatre, London until 25 June 2016.