"He wished he could have said something. His throat is so dry it feels he has been choked to death, but the eyes are still alive. He shook."

"Between your experiences of living both in your homeland and your host country, you experience psychological and existential difficulties, so when do you have the peace of mind to conform?"

"When signs of femininity started showing on my body I was keen to hide them. Not even my own family accepted me."

"I come from Manbij a city that just like all other Syrian cities has suffered bombings, death, liberation, and where kings of all forms and colours have passed through."

"I challenge myself: write, your heart is yours regardless of your mother tongue or the tyrant’s language. Rapidly I transform into a brave lover—exactly, I will write to my dearest."

"Everyone joins in the fun until the singer switches to a loud lament about the massacre in Halabja—no one can understand the sudden change—and soon the bride is in tears and the groom too and grief...

"My name is carved into all the trees / and scribbled on all the buses / despite how I cannot write a single word… "