The War is Over, And
Ghayath Almadhoun’s work stands at the crossroads of resilience and rupture. Born in Damascus and now based between Sweden and Berlin, his poetry navigates the space between belonging and displacement, the traps of authoritarianism and the yearning for freedom.
A curator of perspectives as well as a critical voice in his own right, Almadhoun has encountered the chilling effects of censorship in Germany, where the space for Palestinian voices has narrowed significantly. The cancellation of the Berlin launch of Kontinentaldrift – Das Arabische Europa – a lyrical anthology he co-edited for the Berlin-based literary venue Haus für Poesie – starkly underscores this. Intended as a celebration of Arab voices and lacking any direct connection to Israel or Palestine, the anthology became collateral damage in a fraught landscape cultural climate where artistic expression increasingly clashes with Germany’s narrowing political sensitivities. For Almadhoun, this experience served as a reminder of how the struggles against political repression that shaped his life in Syria still resonate in Germany roday.
This duality – art as both sanctuary and battleground – is mirrored in Almadhoun’s poetry, where the personal and political often converge. In How I Became…, grief is transformed into a commodity. Blending dark humor with existential observation, the poem exemplifies Almadhoun’s ability to transform personal trauma into something universal, evoking a shared sense of absurdity and unease.
In If We Were in a Virtual World, Almadhoun delivers a piercing meditation on war and memory. Layered with metaphors, the poem blurs the boundaries between reality and imagination, presenting war as a lingering mental shrapnel. It juxtaposes the grotesque with the mundane, painting a dystopian tableau of fragmented bodies and shattered ideals. But it also serves an indictment of complicity – a quiet rebellion against the privilege of silence that reverberates sharply in Germany today.
Together, Almadhoun’s works embody a poetic ethos: to confront the unspoken and to find beauty and humor amid despair. His poems reflect the jagged edges of our humanity, refracting a world damaged by both conflict and indifference.
– Hanno Hauenstein
How I became…
Her grief fell from the balcony and broke into pieces, so she needed a new grief. When I went with her to the market the prices were unreal, so I advised her to buy a used grief. We found one in excellent condition although it was a bit big. As the vendor told us, it belonged to a young poet who had killed himself the previous summer. She liked this grief so we decided to take it. We argued with the vendor over the price and he said he’d give us an angst dating from the sixties as a free gift if we bought the grief. We agreed, and I was happy with this unexpected angst. She sensed this and said ‘It’s yours.’ I took it and put it in my bag and we went off. In the evening I remembered it and took it out of the bag and examined it closely. It was high quality and in excellent condition despite half a century of use. The vendor must have been unaware of its value otherwise he wouldn’t have given it to us in exchange for buying a young poet’s low-quality grief. The thing that pleased me most about it was that it was existentialist angst, meticulously crafted and containing details of extraordinary subtlety and beauty. It must have belonged to an intellectual with encyclopedic knowledge or a former prisoner. I began to use it and insomnia became my constant companion. I became an enthusiastic supporter of peace negotiations and stopped visiting relatives. There were increasing numbers of memoirs in my bookshelves and I no longer voiced my opinion, except on rare occasions. Human beings became more precious to me than nations and I began to feel a general ennui, but what I noticed most was that I had become a poet.
2013 – Translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham
If We Were In a Virtual World
Even though the window is virtual, the dead are real.
Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry
1. The war is over
The war is over. But the bombs are still falling inside my head.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have cleaned the window overlooking your house with an electronic newspaper
And the plastic rose that I put on my brother’s grave would have grown.
The war is over, and the friends who went to the market to buy a fresh death were killed on the way.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have recycled my friends
For I need second-hand friends.
The war is over, and the dead have returned to their families safe and sound, the martyrs have returned to their mothers in one piece, mothers have returned to their houses, houses, streets, mosques, eyes, legs have returned to their owners, fingers have returned to hands, rings to fingers, schools to children, washing lines to balconies, lovers to rooftops, my brother has returned to my mother, and I have returned to Damascus.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have forgotten to remember the war
And remembered to forget it, as the dead forget the general’s features
And the martyrs remember the way home.
The war is over, and all those I knew are dead, or war criminals, or dead war criminals.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have turned off the war like you turn off the television
But we were born into a bitch of a world
And when people are born into a bitch of a world
Time changes into a typewriter
And the dead become poems.
Comedy footnote:
The genius of Dante lies in his description of Limbo, think about it a little, you’ll realize immediately that we’re living in the first circle of hell.
(Cut)
2. War
I tried to translate the war from a Semitic language to an Indo-European language for you, and you were hit by shrapnel. I tried to come to your aid and we were besieged by news bulletins. The Security Council tried to send us smart weapons, and security men of average intelligence confiscated them, we insulted the Red Cross and the Vatican objected, we ate the flesh of dogs whose owners had been killed and the environmentalists objected, we were saved from drowning and the European Right objected.
How can I describe to you how much this world resembles the beating of skinny hands on the thick walls of gas chambers in detention camps, without giving you PTSD? How can I explain the difference between house slaves and field slaves, without making you confuse Syria with surrealism? How can I say in the same poem my friends were tortured to death and you are more beautiful than New York, without Lorca laughing in his grave, or poetry being separated from reality?
Tragedy footnote:
The problem with this world is not that a quarter of its inhabitants go to psychiatric clinics, the problem is that the rest don’t go.
(Cut)
3. Chess
When the wind passed by, it couldn’t find the tree and the axe was looking at me, while I was lost in translation, calm as a ceasefire, stuck in a blue planet in a remote suburb of the Milky Way. I saw a gazelle devouring a wolf, blood dripping from her teeth, I saw barren women suckling fetuses that were born dead, I saw electronic flies emerging from Twitter and hovering over my friends’ corpses, I saw a country travelling in a fishing boat, and a man eating his dead brother’s flesh, not metaphorically as in the Quran, but eating the flesh of his brother killed in a bombing raid, so as not to starve to death. The wind passed and didn’t find the tree, or the city, or the country. The dogs didn’t howl, the caravan didn’t move on. My wife the widow looks at me, and the war is clean like a game of chess. Barrels of oil rise in price and barrel bombs of TNT fall on cities, planes lick school textbooks and suck children’s fingers, while I am silent like a European citizen who enjoys the privileges of the first world and asks with the innocence of a domesticated wolf, which is harsher: the Swedish winter or the Arab spring?
Absurd footnote:
The New York Times says milk is white, Paul Celan says milk is black, my mother says there is no milk!
(Cut)
4. A metaphor from a virtual world
Dante was right. This comedy that we are living is divine, or to be fair, let’s say that it’s at least 97% divine, otherwise how do you explain the fact that everything around us resembles a metaphor from a virtual world!
Flowers have sex via bees!
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian!
We are happy because the USA hasn’t dropped the atomic bomb on Tokyo!
A dictator’s supporters demonstrate to demand the banning of demonstrations!
I love you!
God sells lands full of milk and honey!
Finland is the happiest country in the world according to the World Happiness Report!
The cross you wear round your neck is no more than a Roman instrument of torture!
Tragicomedy footnote:
Since everybody is going to die in the end, the death rate in Syria and Sweden is the same.
(Cut)
2020 – Translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham