Poet Ghassan Zaqtan (Not) Reading in San Francisco

As far as I know, Ghassan Zaqtan still doesn’t have a visa for the US. He was supposed to be spending the first two weeks of April promoting Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me (2012, trans. Fady Joudah). From a reader:

Yesterday [April 5], I heard Fady Joudah read his translations of Ghassan Zaqtan’s poetry at SF State University. Zaqtan was supposed to be there, but was denied [a] visa to the US. …

His son had videorecorded him the previous day, though, reading some poems; so we watched the youtube video as a (beautiful) consolation.