Anouk Smies

SONG FOR IBRAHIM SELMAN

You told me your country is frozen
Your people don’t have a pen
Their voices smothered in white bags

You told me to write for 25 years and never look up
Pigeons wrecking my fingers

You described loners who were hated
and summoned me to the ledge

Everybody could see
that war fled from your arms, legs and head
but not how it helped you push a grocery cart
How it sent the ritual straight to its mama

One evening you took a camping trip in my dusk
and explained choices were getting poorer
That we would probably run
writing into our graves

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Statement of Homage 

Ibrahim Selman is a Kurdish writer and filmmaker who got me into writing. Maybe you could even call him the father of my words. The second time we met he told me to keep my chin up, to stand firm, and to write for at least 25 years to establish myself. He wrote a lot about the war in Iraq since he suffered under the regime of Saddam Hussein and eventually fled to Holland. He showed me that giving up is never an option and that using darkness can be a creative force or a reading lamp. He believes in writing in the light of everything that occurs and in leaving nothing out. I sincerely admire his strength and agility, his warmth and humanity. When I started reading his poetry, I was struck by the non-lyricism of it, the direct tone that presented war as something you can't deny, as something present that forces us to look deeper into human nature and redeem it from its clichés. Because of him, I have now looked, keep looking, and dare to tumble.

Ibrahim Selman

Ibrahim Selman was born in 1952 in Iraqi Kurdistan. He worked from 1972 to 1980 as a programmer on a TV station in Bagdad. In 1980, he fled his village for the Kurdish mountains before eventually moving to Holland. He has written books, worked as an actor, and produced and directed films and theater plays. He has also written articles for newspapers like Volkskrant, Trouw, and NRC Handelsblad.

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