In Conversation with Salim Barakat

A Wandering Spirit of Tigris and Euphrates

Emeer Hassanpour in Conversation with Salim Barakat

My interest in conducting this interview stems from my desire to know Salim Barakat personally, as well as my deep fascination with three Kurdish writers whose works were composed across three different regions and languages—writers I think of as “the wandering spirits of the Tigris and Euphrates.”

Iranian writer Ali Ashraf Darvishian rooted his work in the spirit of Kermanshah: the land of Taq-e Bostan, the epic of Shirin and Farhad, and countless other myths and tales. Yaşar Kemal, a Kurdish writer from Turkey and creator of İnce Memed (1955), crafted his narratives against the backdrop of Anatolian feudalism, weaving the Turkish language with Kurdish sensibility and lived experience. Just a few hundred miles away, Salim Barakat was born in 1951 in Qamishli, in Syria—a city where ethnic diversity forged a unique shared cultural identity. Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, and Jews all lived side by side, which perhaps explains why Barakat’s imagination flourishes in stories that embrace them all.

In 2021, while traveling through southeastern Turkey, I attempted to visit Qamishli via the border town of Nusaybin (also known as Nisêbîn), shortly after reading The Sages of Darkness (Fuqahā’ al-Ẓalām, 1985). I had the feeling that the spirit of the Tigris and Euphrates lived there. However, the Turkish government had walled off the city like a prison, making entry and exit nearly impossible. Sitting on a wall facing Qamishli, surrounded by barbed wire, I observed the quiet city for a while, searching its landscape for the figures of Barakat’s novels. Qamishli seemed lifeless in the distance, and whatever I was seeking in Barakat’s narratives remained hidden from sight.

Reading Barakat’s fiction is not easy. In his work, language surrenders to a childlike imagination—to myths, folklore, and dreams—creating a world that breathes life into imagery and animates the inanimate. Living amongst historical ruins, his depictions bare their hidden layers.

I first learned of Barakat through the pioneering Kurdish poet Sherko Bekes, who dedicated a poem, “The Pearl Tree,” to him. A year later, after reading The Captives of Sinjar (2016), What About the Jewish Lady Rachel? (2019), and Geometric Spirits (1987), Bekes’ appraisal resonated with me even more deeply. Barakat was a force of turbulence caught between dream and reality, sleep and wakefulness, liberation and captivity:

You enter my soul, yet you are not light.

You enter my body, yet you are not blood.

You enter my eyes, yet you are not color.

You enter my ears, yet you are not sound.

You are the mystery

of love![i]

Barakat’s writing style is intricately interwoven, a complexity that stems from a deep trust in his readers. He captures the Kurdish imagination and channels it into Arabic prose. Through these channels, Barakat embodies the spirit of Kurdish lore. Indeed, right at the start of our interview, he told me that he “writes in Arabic as the translation of a lost Kurdish text.”

“I cannot overturn fate or turn back time to give you a hypothetical answer. But take what I write in Arabic as the translation of a lost Kurdish text.”

Barakat left Syria in 1972 for Beirut, where he published his debut poetry collection. In 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, he was forced to leave for Cyprus. Speaking about this period in a video interview, Barakat reflected: “In Lebanon, I built relationships that allowed me to create a home and live like any other human being—until, suddenly, Israel invaded Lebanon and expelled us. The first thing that troubled me was having to leave Lebanon, but the most painful thing was losing my books.” In 1999, Barakat settled in Sweden, embracing a secluded lifestyle and a relentless writing discipline that yielded more than two dozen novels.

Getting in touch with Barakat was challenging. He later mentioned that he has “no connection with anyone,” which comes as no surprise given Barakat’s isolation and his previous encounters with other writers and critics. Barakat is forthright, crude, and uncensored in his writings, and he was the same in his responses to my questions. He paints a prophetic picture, neither for himself nor for anyone else. What passes through his heart becomes the ink of his pen. Through his imagination, he desacralizes words, exposing the real face of human life in the most naked way possible.

Eventually, when I wrote him, I  asked if I could make a documentary about him, but he preferred to answer my questions in writing. Respecting his wishes, I kept the interview brief, since Barakat’s poetic responses reveal more about his imaginative universe than any question ever could.

Emeer Hassanpour: Mamoste Barakat, reading your work is not a simple experience; it presents an intricate entanglement of reality and dream. From where do these themes originate, and how do they find expression within your narrative world?

Salim Barakat: It springs from digging into my depths, layer beneath layer: a digging into my soul that draws out what lies in its strata — as the earth holds within its layers buried minerals, stones, and fossils — and it matters not, sometimes, that I use my imagination as explosives.

EH: I know three Kurdish writers who produced their works in languages other than Kurdish and achieved remarkable mastery: yourself in Syria, Yashar Kemal in Turkey, and Ali Ashraf Dervishian in Iran. Despite working across different genres, you seem to engage with similar thematic concerns. Have you encountered these writers, either personally or through their works?

SB: I’ve met neither of them. I read a little of Yasha, and I do not know Darvishian. As for our contributions, let time take upon itself to establish their worth, or let it demolish them, erasing them from its memory.

EH: It seems to me that Kurdish culture is deeply interconnected with that of other communities across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Although Kurds have faced systemic oppression, they remain culturally intertwined with Azeris, Turks, Assyrians, Arabs, Persians, and others. How is this cultural interconnectedness reflected in your work?

SB: All writings are intertwined with the texts buried in the earth, and I am Kurdish—when I write, my connection to all texts is automatic and instinctive, whether Kurdish or otherwise.

EH: I would like to ask about one of the central themes that I encountered in your work: anger and violence. It is difficult to read your work without noticing the prominence of these elements. How do anger and violence function within your imaginative framework?

SB: What can a Kurd do but be angry? Indeed, what can any person in this contemptible, wounding, violent, and terrifying age do but be angry? Anger and violence are two currents in the bloodstream of bodies, and their source is everything you see around you: there is no soothing sight. Be a bullet, or receive one.

EH: Does this suggest that the anger expressed in a writer’s work is necessarily bound up with their personal and daily life?

SB: Life is anger—people like us have known nothing else.

EH: How do you define Kurdish literature, and are there any Kurdish writers who particularly stand out to you?

SB: I don’t know much about Kurdish literature, unfortunately. I have read some of the classics such as Ehmedê Xanî, Feqiyê Teyran, and some Kurdish poets who wrote in Arabic.

EH: I understand you have met Sherko Bekas, and that he dedicated a poem to you called “Pearl Tree.” When did you meet him and how do you see his work?

SB: I met Sherko in Stockholm on my first arrival in Sweden; he visited me before his death. His journey was a fine one.

EH: How do you approach the question of multilingualism and translation in your work? You have suggested that your writing is, in a sense, a translation of the Kurdish language and experience. How do you reflect on that?

SB: I think of life in a doubled way. Memory summons images in the Kurdish mode, and I translate them into Arabic. But the matter is more complex than that. The Kurdish imagination and the Arabic language are intertwined.

EH: What does Qamishli mean to you, and have you ever felt the desire to return?

SB: Qamishli is my personal imagination. I long for it every day.

EH: Were there any writers in Europe or elsewhere who exerted a significant influence on you?

SB: All powerful literature—from Homer to Kafka, Walt Whitman and onward—is what I thought of writing, but they came before me.

EH: How do you distinguish Western modernism from Middle Eastern modernism in literature?

SB: I found no modernity by which to distinguish between its levels.

EH: Even in your works?

SB: The ages are facing mirrors, endlessly reflecting all their images within one another. The past, the present, the hypothetical future, and the imagined—all are limbs of my body, unified by language.

EH: Is there a particular literary style to which you feel most closely drawn?

SB: Literature is literature. Only the powerful draws me, whether poetry or prose.

EH: How about your own writings? Is there a particular poem or novel of yours that you hold in the highest regard?

SB: My books are my children. I have said that many times.

EH: Womanhood and patriarchy manifest in your writing (specifically in the Captives of Sinjar); were there formative experiences in your life that led you to engage critically with these issues?

SB: In the overbearing masculine record of history lie many mines of humiliation. We must now remove them carefully—all of it walks now among mines.

EH: Is labor a theme you engage with in your writing?

SB: I am not a writer of “Socialist Realism”—that caricature of a genre—so why ask me such a question?

EH: Out of curiosity, were you made to bear responsibility for your family as a child?

S.B: I have three small children’s books, very old. I did not take on any family responsibility until marriage, about forty years ago. Yet, that responsibility had nothing to do with children.

EH: You have remarked elsewhere that you were never truly a child, yet a childlike spirit pervades your work in abundance. How do you reconcile the absence of childhood with the persistence of that childlike sensibility in your writing?

SB: Throughout their lives, everyone carries two sacks on their shoulders. Inside one lies their childhood—which is by no means a state of innocence or spontaneity. Childhood is a complex thing.

EH: Turning to politics, as a young writer, did you feel an affinity with any particular movements or political currents?

SB: I have never belonged to any party or ideological current.

EH: You have encountered, directly or indirectly, the brutality and dispossession suffered by both Kurds and Palestinians. How do you see these two experiences reflected and refracted in your work?

SB: Yes. Early on, in Syria, I witnessed the state’s repression of the Kurds. My novel What About the Jewish Lady Rachel? depicts a significant aspect of that reality.

EH: I’d like to ask about your relationship with Adonis. Where did you meet him, and how has that relationship developed over the years?

S.B: In the days of my youth, I shared moments with Adonis. But after our return to Beirut, our paths ultimately diverged in every way—split by ethics, politics, our sense of belonging, and the very meaning of poetry.

EH: What is your most treasured memory or encounter with Mahmoud Darwish?

SB: Every encounter I had with Mahmoud Darwish is dear to me.

EH: He dedicated a poem to you, and you’ve spoken about him many times in different ways. However, more than a decade ago, you wrote a piece called “Mahmoud Darwish and I.”[ii] Could you talk a little about it, particularly the aftermath and the reaction it received?

SB: My answer to your question is brief: my article “Mahmoud and I” offers an extensive account of our relationship, while my piece “Dust on the Shoulders of the Lines”[iii]—a riposte to some racist fools—clarifies the depths of banality to which a certain sick Arab mentality has sunk.

EH: How do you perceive present-day Syria in relation to the past?

SB: Syria, following the fall of the Assad family, is a baffling place—and I am not referring to a religious regime.

EH: What is your relationship to cinema?

SB: Cinema, like the book, is a reference one suffers alongside—oblique, slanted.

EH: Which films do you count among your favorites?

SB: I am drawn to the films of the Japanese Akira Kurosawa, the Russian Eisenstein, the Americans Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese, and the Italian Pier Paolo Pasolini. (The list is vast.)

EH: How do you understand the relationship between literature and cinema?

SB: Cinema is a powerful distillation of image, dialogue, and music together—it is literature examined through its unique elements.

EH: If you were to adapt one of your own works for the screen, which would you choose?

SB: Vacant Sky Over Jerusalem (2011), The Caves of Hydrahudahus (2004), The Mermaid and her Daughters (2013), Hiring Ghosts (2025), and Ithaca (2026).

EH: Your novel Ithaca has recently been published. What fragment of the human soul does the novel seek to capture?

SB: The life awaiting anyone who is returning from war will never be the same; it will be broken and stagnant.

EH: I’d like to ask about one of the characters in the novel, Odysseus: how does he differ from Homer’s version of the character?

SB: To me, Odysseus—or Ulysses—embodies someone returning from contemporary wars: an epic hero, yet one denied a happy ending. Homer’s Odysseus, by contrast, returned from the Trojan War to a triumphant homecoming.

EH: How do you assess the respective roles of the writer and the critic? Do they share a common purpose?

SB: Each has their role. Yet in the impoverished Arab world, very little of genuine criticism has seeped through.

EH: How do you understand the role of the intellectual? Do you perceive a meaningful distinction between the revolutionary or progressive and idealist one?

SB: The role of the “revolutionary” intellectual is nothing but the praise of the party. I am neither revolutionary nor progressive.

EH: What does “freedom,” or the condition of being free, mean to you?

SB: Freedom” is a slippery term. (When there are no ideological questions, such as what is your party?)

EH: How does hope figure in your work and thought? Is there a utopian vision you aspire toward?

SB: I have no origin. And I am no utopian.

EH: Is there any aspect of your work with which you remain dissatisfied, or that you would wish to revisit and write differently?

SB: I wrote what I wrote of my own free will; I will not recant.

EH: And what about life itself?

SB: Life?! It exists in the lines of my poetry and my novels.

EH: For many, the present moment represents the apex of that suffering. As a writer, how do you write such tragedy that must be narrated and given expression?

SB: Existence itself—ever since the dawn of humanity—is a tragedy, and pain is a bloody cycle running through every name.

Emeer Hassanpour is a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature at UCLA. His research focuses on peasant and rural Arab, Turkic, and Persian literature and cinema. His scholarly writing and translations have appeared in academic journals and magazines, including Spectator, The Locomotive magazine, and Film Criticism. Hassanpour has directed several films, including his most recent co-directed feature film, The Bread Season (Demsala Nan, 2025). He is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the Annenberg Fellowship, Eugene V. Cota-Robles Award, the California Art Fellowship, and the Boren Chertkov Residency for Labor and Justice.

Notes

[i] Excerpt from “The Pearl Tree.”

Bekas, Sherko. “The Pearl Tree.” In Meadow of Wound, Meadow of Sun. Vejin Books. https://books.vejin.net/ck/text/16735.

[ii] Salim Barakat, “Maḥmūd Darwīsh wa-anā” [Mahmoud Darwish and I], Al-Quds Al-Arabi, June 6, 2020, https://www.alquds.co.uk/محمود-درويش-وأنا/.

[iii] Salim Barakat, “Fī al-radd ‘alā muntaqidī maqālat ‘Maḥmūd Darwīsh wa-anā’: Ghubār ‘alā aktāf al-suṭūr” [In response to the critics of the article “Mahmoud Darwish and I”: Dust on the shoulders of the lines], Al-Quds Al-Arabi, August 29, 2020, https://www.alquds.co.uk/في-الردّ-على-منتقدي-مقالة-محمود-درويش/.