Sinan Antoon

Sami, a retired doctor, lives with his son and grandchildren in Brooklyn. But Sami keeps losing his way. Every day he sinks deeper into dementia and old memories of life in Iraq before the war. Omar arrives in the US with a fake identity and no friends or family. Having run away from the Iraqi army, he has been branded a deserter and his ear brutally cut off. Omar carries this mark of shame with him and refuses to talk about the past. He dreams of getting his ear, and his dignity, back. When their paths cross at least one of them knows that they have met before – if only he could remember where. Exploring the aftermath of war and how the past haunts new beginnings, Notes from a Lost Country creates a moving portrait of life in exile.

Notes from a Lost Country

Rana Al-Jalili

The speaker reiterated what he had mentioned earlier about traditional medications in use now not improving patients but paralyzing their senses and turning them into vegetables instead. 

They said they would turn Iraq into a paradise where new rivers join those already flowing. But they gobbled up everything above and beneath Iraq's ground.

Why does the victim repeatedly internalize its executioner? And it becomes a new, even crueler, executioner

They lived in their tiny shells. Never learned a thing, Never read a book. Their diplomas are fake. Even the physicians among them never even practiced medicine. He sees them sometimes doing interviews on TV, sitting at their desks with all those elegantly bound, and carefully arranged, book sets with shiny titles behind them. Sitting on shelves and perhaps never read, because they are more interested in covers. It's the age of glossy covers. The age of peels and shells. The age of trash.

They shrivelled, but you remained evergreen 

In darkness, your night’s face is a full moon

Fates were cruel to you, but they were stunned

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