Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

From Kabul to California: Khaled Hosseini writes home away from home.

‘One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls’ — a Persian line quoted by Khaled Hosseini in his celebrated novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, to conjure an image of a Kabul he can no longer call home. Writing novels that primarily explore life in Afghanistan through time, Khaled Hosseini shares poetic visions of the country he was born into. The reality of his own experience however, has been one of separation and distance from his home nation. Being forced to seek asylum in the US as a teenager, Khaled Hosseini’s exile led him to pick up the pen and write his way back home. Today, he is an acclaimed author of four novels, raising awareness globally for the experiences of the people of Afghanistan, and displaced communities.

Khaled Hosseini was born on 4th March 1965, in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Hosseini was born into looks strikingly different from the Afghanistan we see in contemporary media today. At this time, Afghanistan was not engaged in any conflict, though this is not to say it was entirely stable. In 1973 the king was overthrown by prime minister and president Mohammad Daoud Khan, and Afghanistan became a non-democratic authoritarian republic. Between the sixties and early seventies, however, Kabul was considered a growing and liberated space. It was a popular destination for travellers, taking a spot on what was known as the ‘hippy trail.’ As a master of words himself, it is perhaps best to use his own to paint a picture of the country in 1965. In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Hosseini describes it as ‘a country at peace with itself [...] a growing, cosmopolitan city.’

In 1976, his father’s work at the Afghan Foreign Ministry prompted a relocation to the Afghan Embassy in Paris. At eleven, Hosseini found himself moving away from his home, expecting a temporary stay. Little did he know, a trip that was intended to last only four years, would result in the family never going back.

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan closed the door on any quick return. Beginning in December 1979, the Soviet Union took military and political control in Afghanistan, starting with Kabul and other parts of the country. The Soviet Union had become closely allied with the communist government in Afghanistan, and aimed to keep a communist grasp on the country in order to limit the influence of the US in the Middle East. However, the communist government was facing resistance from the largely Muslim anti-communist Mujahideen groups operating in rural regions. Fighting between these two groups produced one of the largest refugee movements of the twentieth century. For Hosseini’s family, it turned a temporary diplomatic posting into a permanent displacement.

The escalating tensions in Afghanistan made it impossible for Hosseini and his family to return home, and they had no choice but to divert their journey. Instead of heading to the Middle East, they swung west — Hosseini and his family sought political asylum in the US. Hosseini expresses in interviews that he believes himself and his family to have been more fortunate than many of the other Afghan refugees who fled the country at this time. Many of these individuals were placed in refugee camps in neighbouring Pakistan or given roles as labourers in Iran. Estimates for the era put total Afghan refugees and displaced persons in the mid-millions (commonly cited figures are roughly 5–6 million displaced overall, with around 2 million into Pakistan and about 1 million into Iran).

Hosseini settled in California, and found himself thrown into adolescence in a country where he couldn’t speak the language, and was forced to pick it up as he went. Moving into adulthood, Hosseini completed a BA in biology at Santa Clara University and later earned an MD from the University of California, San Diego. It was alongside his work as a doctor that he began storytelling. From speaking no English at 15, Hosseini not only picked up the language but mastered it, using it to give a voice to the experiences of people in Afghanistan.

Themes of displacement and diaspora remain central for Hosseini, and these find themselves becoming prominent in his work. His fiction career began with The Kite Runner (2003), followed by A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) and And the Mountains Echoed (2013). Each of these explores themes of memory, connection, and the private costs of public violence. The Kite Runner focuses on the relationship between a privileged boy from Kabul and his friend against the backdrop of the tumultuous political climate of the country. The equally poignant A Thousand Splendid Suns takes a different perspective on life in Afghanistan: in this novel he turns to the female experience, a shift he later attributed to returning visits to Afghanistan in the early 2000s. His most recent novel about Afghanistan, And the Mountains Echoed, tracks similar themes through generations of an Afghan family. Looking at the entirety of his discography, Hosseini paints a vivid image both of the life he left behind in Afghanistan, and the aftermath of the various conflicts that have prevented him from returning home.

Using his pen to advocate not only for those living in Afghanistan, Hosseini has also engaged with refugee crises globally. In 2018, he published a short story titled Sea Prayer. This was inspired by the tragic death of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned in an attempt to cross the Mediterranean. Subsequently, this story takes the form of a letter from a father to a son, as they prepare to undertake a similar journey. Hosseini discusses the significance of this story with NPR:

“It speaks to the experience of so many refugee children, whether we’re talking about Syria or Afghanistan — an entire generation of children who are being raised amid turmoil and violence and war, and have no personal connection to the beauty and the richness of their country before all the turmoil began.”

With this text, Hosseini’s work has expanded from a sole focus on life in Afghanistan through time, to a wider reflection of the refugee experience. He frames displacement in a direct, accessible form aimed at a wide audience.

Beyond fiction, Khaled Hosseini works to change the lives of refugees through charitable means. Since 2006, he has been a part of the UN refugee agency, acting as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. As part of this work, he has travelled globally to document the experiences of refugees, making field visits to Afghanistan, Lebanon, Italy, Uganda, Jordan, Chad, and Iraq. As well as this, in 2008 he established the Khaled Hosseini Foundation, an organisation dedicated to giving humanitarian aid to vulnerable groups in Afghanistan. Taking a particular focus on the protection of women and children, this foundation works to provide healthcare, education and shelter for families. Khaled Hosseini has both written stories demonstrating the need for global attention both to Afghanistan and the refugee experience more widely, and he continues to make efforts to enact this aid through his various humanitarian commitments. His humanitarian work and his books operate in tandem: the novels humanise large-scale suffering for international readers while his advocacy supports direct aid on the ground.

In this post Leya highlights the arty refugee experience of Khaled Hosseini. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Ten-year-old Marjane Satrapi saw Iran transform overnight during the 1979 Revolution. Forced into the veil and eventually exiled to Vienna, she struggled with racism and lost identity. Satrapi reclaimed her story through Persepolis. Her graphic memoir uses stark art and humor to turn personal trauma into a global symbol of resistance.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

How Marjane Satrapi Turned Revolution into a Global Story

In 1979, as Iran erupted into revolution, a ten-year-old girl watched her world change overnight. Schools closed. Veils became mandatory. Friends disappeared. The rules of everyday life from what to wear, what to say, even how to think, shifted under the weight of a new regime.

That girl was Marjane Satrapi. Years later, she would transform those memories into Persepolis, a graphic memoir that would become one of the most recognisable accounts of revolution, exile and identity in the modern world.

Today, Satrapi is a globally celebrated artist, filmmaker and writer. At the heart of her work lies her personal experience of displacement- not just from a country, but from a sense of belonging.

Childhood, Rebellion, and the First Loss

Before she became the voice behind Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi was a child standing in a prison visiting room, saying goodbye to her uncle for the last time. He had been imprisoned for his political beliefs and had chosen Satrapi as his final visitor before he was executed. Satrapi was only ten years old.

It’s a moment that lingers in Persepolis- not dramatised, not exaggerated, just quietly devastating. And it marks the point where childhood, for her, begins to fracture.

Satrapi was born in 1969 into a politically engaged, middle-class family in Tehran. Her parents were outspoken critics of authoritarian rule, deeply embedded in political life, and committed to raising a daughter who would question everything. Dinner table conversations were rarely small talk; they were about revolution, justice, and what kind of future Iran could become.

When the Iranian Revolution began, there was hope. Like many families, hers believed it might bring freedom. Instead, it ushered in a regime that quickly tightened its grip on everyday life.

For Satrapi, this shift wasn’t distant or abstract, it showed up at school, on the streets, in what she was allowed to wear. Her bilingual French school was shut down. The veil became mandatory. Rules multiplied overnight.

But if the regime demanded conformity, Satrapi pushed back in the only ways she could.

At school, she developed a reputation for being outspoken, stubborn, and, in her own way, rebellious. She challenged teachers, questioned authority, and refused to quietly accept the version of the world she was being handed.

In Persepolis, she doesn’t present herself as a passive observer of history. She is argumentative, curious, sometimes naive, but always thinking for herself. One moment she’s dreaming of becoming a prophet; the next, she’s debating politics with adults.

That tension, between innocence and defiance, is what makes her story so compelling.

At such a young age, Satrapi was trying to figure out something so complex: where she belonged. In a country that was rapidly changing, in a system that demanded obedience, and in a childhood that was slipping away faster than it should have.

Through her eyes, history doesn’t feel distant. It feels immediate, confusing, and deeply personal.

And that is where Persepolis begins.

Growing Up Under Fire

The situation worsened with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. Bombings, air raid sirens, and constant fear of death became part of daily life. In Persepolis, Satrapi captures this reality with stark, simple imagery: black skies, crumbling buildings, and silent figures absorbing loss.

One of the most haunting moments in the memoir is the death of her friend’s family in a missile strike, depicted through the shocking image of her friend’s hand wearing a turquoise bracelet in the rubble. It is a reminder of how suddenly life could be erased.

Fearing for her safety and future, Satrapi’s parents made a difficult decision, they sent her to Vienna at the age of 14. It was an act of protection, but also the beginning of exile.

Sent Away at Fourteen

In Austria, Satrapi faced new struggles. Removed from her family, her language, and everything familiar, she found herself caught between worlds. At fourteen, she was expected to rebuild a life from scratch, navigating a culture that didn’t fully understand her and, at times, didn’t want to.

She faced racism, isolation, and the quiet pressure to assimilate. In Persepolis, she recalls hiding her Iranian identity to avoid judgement and then wrestling with the guilt that followed. If she distanced herself from where she came from, who did that make her?

This is where one of the central ideas of her work begins to take shape: identity is not something stable or fixed, but something constantly negotiated, especially in exile.

The reality of her life in Vienna was far from the idea of escape. She moved between unstable housing, experienced periods of homelessness, and struggled with depression. The freedom she had been sent to find often felt like abandonment.

Eventually, she returned to Iran. But home no longer felt like home.

Instead, she found herself in a space many refugees and migrants recognise- where home exists in two places, and yet in neither. Not entirely Iranian anymore, but never fully accepted as European either.

That in-between space- uncomfortable, unresolved, and deeply human- became central to Satrapi’s voice as an artist. It is what gives Persepolis its emotional depth, and what allows it to resonate far beyond her own story.

Persepolis and Humour in the Face of Oppression

Persepolis, first published in 2000, is not just a memoir, it is a political and cultural intervention.

At a time when Western narratives about Iran were dominated by headlines and stereotypes, Satrapi offered something radically different: a human story. Through black-and-white drawings and sharp, often humorous dialogue, she presented Iranians not as distant “others”, but as relatable humans living through extraordinary circumstances.

The visual style of Persepolis is deceptively simple. The bold, high-contrast illustrations strip scenes down to their emotional core. This simplicity makes the story accessible and universal. Readers are not overwhelmed by detail, instead they are drawn into the emotional truth of each moment.

Satrapi has said she chose the graphic novel format deliberately. mages, she believed, could communicate across cultures in ways words alone often could not.

One of the most striking aspects of Persepolis is its use of humour. Even in the darkest moments, Satrapi finds space for irony and wit.

She writes about buying illegal Western music on the black market, arguing with authority figures, and navigating the absurd contradictions of life under strict rule. These moments do not diminish the seriousness of her experiences, instead, they make them more real.

Humour becomes a form of resistance and a way of maintaining individuality in a system that demands conformity.

From Memoir to Global Impact

Persepolis has been translated into dozens of languages and is studied in classrooms around the world.

The success of Persepolis led to a film adaptation in 2007, which Satrapi co-directed. The film was nominated for an Academy Award and brought her story to an even wider audience.

Since then, Satrapi has continued to work across different media, including film and illustration. But Persepolis remains her most influential work, not only because of its artistic merit, but because of its timing and impact.

In a world increasingly shaped by migration and displacement, her story resonates with readers far beyond Iran. It speaks to anyone who has experienced the tension between home and elsewhere, between identity and expectation.

Why Her Story Matters Now

Satrapi’s work feels particularly relevant today. As tensions around Iran continue to surface in global headlines, conversations about the region are often reduced to politics, conflict, and statistics.

Persepolis pushes back against that, quietly, but powerfully, by restoring the human dimension.

In many ways, the world Satrapi writes about does not feel distant. The questions her work raises about freedom, control, belonging, and resistance, are still being lived in real time.

More broadly, global conversations around refugees and migrants continue to flatten lives into labels and numbers. Persepolis pushes back against that flattening of lives into labels, insisting instead on the messy, human reality behind them.

Importantly, Satrapi does not present herself simply as a victim. Her story is not one of passive suffering, but of agency. She questions authority, challenges norms, and ultimately tells her own story on her own terms.

By turning her life into art, Satrapi does something powerful; she reclaims control over how her story, and by extension the story of her country, is told. Instead of being spoken about, she speaks for herself.

That refusal to be simplified, to be reduced to a headline, is what gives Persepolis its lasting power.

Because while the context may evolve, the experience of displacement, of being misunderstood, of searching for home, remains strikingly unchanged.

And in telling that story, Satrapi asks readers not just to observe, but to understand.

References -

Satrapi, M. (2003) Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. London: Vintage.

Satrapi, M. (2004) Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. London: Vintage.

Satrapi, M. and Paronnaud, V. (2007) Persepolis [film]. France: Sony Pictures Classics.

NPR (2008) ‘Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis, Politics And Art’, NPR. Available at:

https://www.npr.org

(Accessed: 25 March 2026).

Chute, H. (2010) Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. New York: Columbia University Press.

In this UGC post Rebecca highlights the arty refugee experience of Marjane Satrapi. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

Brushstrokes of Resilience: Marwan Mousa’s Journey from Refugee to Artist

It is the 15th of March, 2011. The air in Damascus is dry- Syria is undergoing its worst drought in modern history. The dry heat is perfect kindling for the firestorm of dissent that is about to explode in Syria. In protest of Bashar Al-Assad’s government, and despite the regime’s anti-demonstration laws, hundreds of protesters are gathering in Damascus, Aleppo, and other major cities. They are protesting the arrest and torture of a group of teenagers who painted revolutionary slogans on a school wall. Before long, the protests are violently dispersed- state security forces attack and detain men, women and children. A 10-year-old boy is detained alongside his father. The police have opened fire on protesters, and by the end of the day, 3000 people have been detained. Some are known to have been killed, although official figures are hard to come by. The next day, protests erupt again. The protests grow, and the extreme police force only strengthens resolve. By July, the protests are hundreds of thousands strong. These protests are the foundation for what will become the Syrian civil war.

Marwan Mousa was born in 1967 in northeastern Syria. His family is Kurdish, the largest ethnic minority in Syria. In spite of their prevalence, they are routinely subject to discrimination. In 1962, in a highly controversial move, the government stripped 20% of Syria’s Kurdish population of citizenship after claims that Kurds from Turkey were illegally migrating to Syria, although evidence for this is unclear. A process of registration was enforced on the Kurdish population, leading to up to 200,000 ‘stateless’ Kurds denied citizenship. Roughly 500,000 stateless Kurds live in Syria today, with no access to education, limited employment opportunities, and an inability to emigrate due to lack of documentation. By 1973, areas with majority Kurdish populations were being resettled under government plans to ‘Arabise’ Syria, involving the replacement of Kurdish place names with Arabic ones, and the deporting of 140,000 Kurds to a southern desert region.

The erasure of Kurdish culture continued, often through violence. In March 1986, a few thousand Kurds gathered in Damascus, wearing traditional dress, celebrating Newroz, a Kurdish new-year festival. Police fired on the crowd, killing one, and at a similar celebration in Afrin, three Kurds were killed. The government would later ban Newroz festivities. In 2011, against a backdrop of anti-government protest, Kurdish politician and advocate Mashaal Tammo was killed. It is not entirely clear who is responsible for his death, but at his funeral procession, when 50,000 people gathered in Qamishli to mourn, police opened fire on the crowd, killing five.

The Syrian civil war was a vast and complex conflict, with numerous factions and interest groups fighting for their own interests. The historically disenfranchised Kurdish population of Syria participated in this.

The conflict disrupted the life and livelihood of Marwan Mousa, a husband and father of four. He owned a cellphone repair shop in Syria, but the war soon forced him and his family into exile. In 2013, Mousa and his family fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, a majority-Kurd region, where they spent two years in a refugee camp. While they were safe from the Syrian civil war, times were still incredibly challenging. Iraqi Kurdistan faced extreme repression, and the Kurds suffered genocide under Saddam Hussein during the 1988 Anfal and Halabja military campaigns. In late 2012, tensions rose along the autonomous Kurdish border, resulting in skirmishes between state and Kurdish forces. However, beyond the political tensions, times were particularly tough for Mousa and his family. They lived in a tent in the camp for two years, during which time Mousa began to create art. One of his paintings from the period depicts their tent, reflecting the struggles of living in a refugee camp, “especially in the winter, when the conditions are really bad.”

Beyond the difficulties of the camp, the family faced a pressing medical issue. Mousa’s son, Mohammed, was suffering from Thalassemia, a genetic blood disease that leads to a lack of hemoglobin, an enlarged spleen, and brittle bones, making individuals more susceptible to infections and broken bones. Treatment is costly and demanding, requiring regular blood transfusions, chelation therapy (the removal of excess iron from the blood), and sometimes stem cell treatment. Mousa was unable to access his son’s much-needed treatment in their refugee camp in Iraq.

In 2016, Marwan Mousa and his family were resettled in the UK under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, which was launched in 2014 to bring high-risk people from Syria to the UK. This involved “people requiring urgent medical treatment, survivors of violence and torture, and women and children at risk.” In 2015, the scheme was expanded to resettle 20,000 Syrians in the UK. Mousa and his family were resettled in Belfast, becoming part of the 632 Syrian refugees in Northern Ireland. The journey was crucial for Mohammed, who was able to access treatment.

Mousa began creating art in Iraq. Once in Belfast, however, his artwork became both richer and more joyful. His son was receiving treatment, his family had a home, and the local council supported their integration into Northern Ireland. While the family was being supported by the children’s charity Barnardo’s, Mousa’s work was introduced to Deirdre Mackel, an arts programme manager at a Belfast trust supporting marginalised groups. Through Mackel, Mousa was able to put on his first exhibition in Belfast in 2017. He put on another at St Mary’s University College, Belfast in August of 2017, displaying paintings that reflected the difficulties of life in Syria and the refugee experience. He has continued to paint since then, putting on another exhibition in September of 2019.

He has also contributed to the Belfast community by volunteering with Action Ability, a group supporting disabled people in the city. He attends their art classes, helping young people with painting.

Marwan Mousa’s story is one of resilience. In spite of the difficulties he has faced, he has made a home for him and his family in Belfast, where he indulges his passion for art and passes it onto others.

In this post Camille highlights the arty refugee experience of Marwan Mousa She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Jafar Panahi’s 2025 Cannes victory for It Was Just an Accident cements his legacy as a defiant auteur. Despite decades of Iranian state censorship, imprisonment, and filming bans, Panahi continues to shoot clandestine, innovative cinema. His work remains a powerful tool of political resistance, demanding freedom and national unity.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

Jafar Panahi: cinema as resistance

“It is very difficult to speak,” Jafar Panahi confessed, standing on stage at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Indeed, when the director came to be awarded the Palme d’Or for his 2025 film It Was Just an Accident (Yek tasadof-e-sade), the audience’s reaction made up for his own reticence. The 65-year-old was met with an almost eight-minute standing ovation - to which he responded by basking in the moment with his hands behind his head.

To the many Iranians watching, both in the Grand Théȃtre and across the world, the applause was the recognition of, not simply a single film, but a broader struggle against decades of censorship after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Following the inauguration of the Islamic Republic, many predicted that new restrictions would kill Iranian cinema. Instead, it is recognised today as one of the most innovative and distinctive film industries - formed of adversity and necessitating extraordinary measures in order to escape the deadening hand of state repression.

For this we have Jafar Panahi - and his illustrious forebears, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbof - to thank. Of the world’s currently active filmmakers, only he has won the Golden Bear at Berlin (Taxi, 2015), the Golden Lion at Venice (The Circle, 2000), and now the 2025 Palme d’Or at Cannes. Yet not only does Panahi boast creative mastery, but political zeal too, having participated in virtually every anti-government movement in Iran and been imprisoned several times.

Much of Panahi’s acceptance speech struck an activistic tone, as he urged his compatriots to unite: “What’s most important now is our country and the freedom of our country,” he said, “Let us join forces. No-one should dare tell us what kind of clothes we should wear, what we should do, or what we should not do.” This demand carries the weight of Panahi’s own resistance, exhibited throughout his career, and reflects his own defiance of Iran’s authorities.

Unsurprisingly, this stance is maintained in the darkly absurdist fable, It Was Just an Accident. “It really begins,” Panahi explains, “with a small sound: a prosthetic leg tapping against the outskirts of Tehran.” Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), a diffident mechanic and former political prisoner, stiffens. He recognises the limp as belonging to the interrogator - dubbed ‘Peg Leg’ because of the distinctive squeak of his prosthetic limb - who once tortured him in captivity. Or so he believes - the rest of the film captures his anxious attempts to determine whether this is true or not.

It is really the final scene which lingers, long after you have left the dark enclosure of the auditorium and returned to reality. We see Vahid’s van parked somewhere remote. We hear the sound of a prosthetic leg. Is it the oppressor’s? Real or imagined? Has he escaped? As we ponder, the film cuts. Vengeance collapses under its own weight, and the film refuses to resolve - instead settling into an ambiguity that sets up more universal questions about the peace after bloody vengeance.

The Cannes-winning film, Panahi’s first since he was released from the notorious Evin Prison in 2022, was shot without an official permit and filmed almost entirely in secret. It also contains scenes with women who aren’t wearing the hijab, outward defiance against a mandatory dress code established after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Panahi’s connection to Cannes is long-standing. His debut feature, The White Balloon (1995) won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, conferring the early recognition that enabled him to bear and nourish the dual status of auteur and democracy campaigner. In a 2018 interview with Jamsheed Akhrami, he spoke about the incompatibility between independent filmmakers and the Iranian state authority: “We have always”, he said, “tried to avoid the government and shield ourselves from its interference. But the hardliners have failed to silence independent filmmakers. When they’ve kicked us out the door, we’ve jumped back in through the window to do what we needed to do.”

In 2009, Panahi’s incarceration while shooting a film about Iran’s street protests provoked international uproar, forcing the government to release him. In 2010 he was arrested again, with the court issuing a six-year prison sentence along with a 20-year ban on filmmaking and travel outside of Iran.

Far from being deterred, Panahi has recrafted his practice under these new penalties. Since the ban, he has completed six feature-length films and several shorter works; under varying degrees of restriction, they often use confined interiors, nonprofessional actors and skeleton crews. This Is Not a Film (2012) - shot on a digital camcorder and iPhone for just €3200 - and Closed Curtain (2014) were filmed entirely indoors, while Taxi (2015) unfolds solely within the confines of a car. Nowadays, all of Panahi’s films released after 2000 have been effectively banned from official release in Iran; he now works clandestinely to find channels for international exhibition - one being smuggling films out of the country on a USB thumb drive.

In December 2025, the government sentenced Panahi “in absentia, to one year of imprisonment, two years of prohibition from leaving the country, and a ban on membership in any political or social groups or organizations, on the charge of propaganda against the regime,” his lawyer said in a statement on X. However, he still vows to return to Iran - where both his mother and son still live. During last year’s Cannes Film Festival, he told EL PAÍS: “I will return home. It may sound strange to you, but the Iranian people have much more at stake. The most important thing is our country and achieving its freedom.”

So, when Jafar Panahi confesses, “It is very difficult to speak,” his remark resonates beyond the nerves of an awards stage. Rather, he speaks for a nation enduring a wave of merciless destruction - a nation whose true representatives are not in the corridors of power, but in the society that their art reflects.

In this post Camille highlights the arty refugee experience of Marwan Mousa She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

In 2007, the Taliban banned girls' education in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Young Malala Yousafzai refused to be silent. She blogged for the BBC and survived an assassination attempt. Today, the Nobel laureate fights for 122 million girls still out of school, proving that one book and one pen can change the world.

Back Story

The Girl Who Risked Her Life to Fight for the Right to Education

The Swat valley in northwestern Pakistan is known for its scenic views. The Swat river flows through lush green forests against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains. Malala Yousafzai was born in 1997 in the Swat District. In 2007, the Pakistani Taliban took control over the valley, transforming it into a war zone. This jihadist militant organization is designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations and the Government of Pakistan. The organisation has a highly conservative interpretation of Islam. The Pakistani Taliban banned residents from owning televisions, playing music, and dancing. They targeted schools. The Taliban blew up more than 100 schools for girls in an attempt to limit girls’ access to education.

Malala Yousafzai spoke out against the ban on the education of girls. She began her activism journey in 2008, at the age of 11. Malala delivered her first speech called “How Dare the Taliban Take Away My Basic Right to Education?” which was covered by newspapers and television channels all over Pakistan.

Malala’s activism began at a young age with the encouragement of her father Ziauddin Yousafzai. He founded Khushal Girls High School and College. Malala’s father advocates for education for all, in particular for girls who are often denied an education in Pakistan.

Malala began writing about her experience at a young age. She began a blog for the BBC called Diary of a Pakistani schoolgirl under a pseudonym at age 11. Malala shared her daily life under the Taliban. Writing became a form of resistance. She expresses her fear of being killed by the Pakistani Taliban. But Malala refused to be silent and continued to fight for the right to an education. Malala famously said “if people were silent, nothing would change.” In her first diary entry, Malala writes “I was afraid going to school because the Taliban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.” But she continued going to school even when the Swat valley became a war zone.

In 2011, she was awarded Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize. On the 9th of October 2012, on the way home from school, Malala was talking with her friends about schoolwork. Two members of the Pakistani Taliban stopped her school bus. One of them boarded the bus and asked “Who is Malala?” He shot her in the head for speaking out against Taliban restrictions on female education. Her murder attempt received worldwide media coverage. Malala became an international symbol of the fight for girls’ education.

Malala was moved to the United Kingdom where she recovered from her assassination attempt. She was lucky to survive. But Malala was unable to return to her home country for six years. She wrote her first memoir with journalist Christina Lamb. In I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (2013), she tells the story of her childhood in the Swat valley as it gradually came under Taliban control. Malala wrote about surviving a Taliban attack and her fight for girls’ education. The book became a best-seller. Pakistani private schools banned Malala’s book.

Malala’s activism did not stop after her assassination attempt. In 2013, she spoke at the United Nations Youth Assembly, calling for all children to have access to education. Malala argued that “one child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” Girls’ education allows them to choose their own futures, reaching their full potential. Education for all promotes gender equality.

She founded the Malala Fund with her father. The organisation campaigns globally so that girls can access at least 12 years of free, safe, and quality education. Over 122 million girls are still out of school today, primarily in low-income countries. Girls are stopped from getting an education by gender biases, conflicts, and poverty. Women still represent around two-thirds of all illiterate adults according to UNESCO. The Malala Fund helps to provide schooling for girls in countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. In 2015, she opened a girls’ school in Lebanon for refugees from the Syrian Civil War. Investment in education should be increasing. But in some countries like Pakistan, it is decreasing. This motivated Malala to launch the social media campaign #booksnotbullets in 2015. She called on world leaders to increase funding for education, rather than wars. Malala emphasises the importance of education in building peace.

Malala became the youngest Nobel laureate at the age of 17. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her fight for the right of every child to receive an education. During her acceptance speech, Malala said “this award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.” She dedicated the prize money to the Malala Fund.

She wrote the picture book Malala’s Magic Pencil (2017) which was based on her childhood, inspiring young readers. As a child, she made a wish for a magic pencil to solve her problems. In We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World (2019), Malala writes about her experience as an internally displaced person in Pakistan and her visits to refugee camps. As a child, her family lived as displaced people in Pakistan when they were forced to flee Taliban rule. Malala also shares the stories of nine other displaced people from countries including Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Columbia. She gave a voice to those who are often silenced. Malala famously said “I tell my story not because it is unique, but because it is the story of many girls.” More than 68 million people are currently living as refugees or internally displaced people.

In 2020, she graduated from the University of Oxford where she read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Her most recent memoir Finding My Way (2025) tells the story of her life in high school and university. She tells the story of smoking a bong at Oxford which brought back the trauma of being shot by the Taliban. Malala remembered “my school bus. A man with a gun. Blood everywhere. My body carried through a crowded street. Strangers hunched over me, yelling things I didn’t understand. My father rushing toward the stretcher to take my hand.”

This year a new portrait was unveiled at her Oxford college Lady Margaret Hall to celebrate her. Malala spoke at the 2026 United Nations’ International Women’s Day commemoration. In her speech, she expressed concern about the situation in Afghanistan. Girls have been unable to go to secondary school or university since the Taliban took over the country in 2021. Women cannot go to work, leave their homes without a male chaperone, or even speak in public. Women and girls in Afghanistan are being erased from public life under Taliban rule.

Malala gives voices to those who are often silenced. Her story reflects the experiences of many girls who are denied an education and internally displaced people. Malala inspires a generation through her speeches and books. Through her storytelling, she highlights the importance of education in a world where a quarter of a billion children remain out of school. Malala continues to fight for girls’ education around the world today.

Why Girls’ Education | Malala Fund

Malala’s Story

Out now: Malala’s new book, “We Are Displaced”

Malala Yousafzai at the UN: Justice Cannot Be Selective

Malala Yousafzai | Biography, Nobel Prize, & Facts | Britannica

I Am Malala | Story, Summary, Author, Themes, & Facts | Britannica

The Inspiring Story of Malala Yousafzai’s Fight for Education | Britannica

Malala Yousafzai: Portrait of the girl blogger - BBC News

Malala portrait unveiled at her Oxford college

New Portrait Celebrates LMH Alumna Malala Yousafzai | Lady Margaret Hall

Malala Yousafzai’s book banned in Pakistani private schools

Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai review – growing up in public | Books | The Guardian

How smoking a bong brought back the trauma of being shot by the Taliban – an exclusive extract from Malala Yousafzai’s memoir

Malala Yousafzai | United Nations

Education emergency: now or never | UNICEF Pakistan

Malala Yousafzai – Biographical - NobelPrize.org

Malala Yousafzai wants leaders to invest in #booksnotbullets - Los Angeles Times

In this post Laura highlights the arty refugee experience of Malala Yousafzai. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Back Story

Post-war Sri Lanka left 300,000 Tamil refugees in harsh camps. Women and children faced severe overcrowding, sexual violence, and acute malnutrition. Yet, they refused to be passive victims. Children formed camp parliaments to solve resource problems. Women bravely testified to the UN and led protests to rebuild their community.

For the full article and podcast click here.

In this post Cal created this micro game to make the Tamil Women and Children’s story interactiv. He is a gaming and marketing intern on a placement with us organised by Virtual Internships.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

Bearing Witness: Art, Memory, and Survival in the Work of Vann Nath

The first thing that struck me at Tuol Sleng was the quiet. Not the reverent hush of a memorial, but the stillness of an abandoned schoolyard at midday. A basketball hoop leaned over cracked concrete; climbing frames remained where children had once played. Without context a visitor might assume the place had simply been deserted. On closer inspection, a photograph fixed to the wall revealed the truth: the same hoop had been used to suspend prisoners during interrogation. Tuol Sleng, or Security Prison 21, was a secondary school in central Phnom Penh until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge converted its five buildings into one of the regime’s most notorious prisons. It is within this space that the work of Vann Nath acquires its full force.

Born in 1946 in Battambang province, Vann Nath grew up in a poor rural family with little access to formal education. He came to art outside institutional pathways, first encountering it through temple murals and later developing his skills through informal study. Before 1975, his life followed a modest course: he painted landscapes and cinema posters, earning a living within a small, local art economy.

This trajectory was violently interrupted by the rise of the Khmer Rouge. On 17 April 1975, the Communist Party of Kampuchea seized Phnom Penh, inaugurating a radical political project under Pol Pot. Influenced by Maoist agrarianism, Stalinist centralisation, and anti-colonial nationalism, the regime sought to dismantle urban society and construct a rural, classless utopia. Cities were evacuated, intellectuals targeted, and perceived enemies systematically eliminated. In 1978, Vann Nath was arrested and accused of being an “enemy of the state.” He was transferred to S-21, the regime’s central interrogation and torture facility, where an estimated 15,000-20,000 prisoners were processed. Only a handful survived.

Vann Nath’s survival was precarious, and in many ways accidental, but it was also bound to his ability to paint. His name appeared on an execution list before being altered by the prison commandant, Kang Kek Iew, with the brief instruction: “Spare the painter”. He was then made to produce portraits and sculptures of Pol Pot—images designed to project authority and reinforce the regime’s ideology. In this context, art became something else entirely: not an act of expression, but a form of labour imposed under threat. It was both a tool of the system that imprisoned him and the reason he remained alive.

Following the Vietnamese overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Vann Nath emerged as one of the twelve recorded survivors of S-21. He was found at Choeung Ek shortly after the prison was abandoned, severely weakened from starvation and illness, and later began to recover in Phnom Penh. But rather than distancing himself from what he had lived through, Nath returned to it repeatedly within his work. In the early 1980s, when the new authorities began commissioning visual documentation of Khmer Rouge crimes for the newly opened Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, he was asked to reconstruct scenes from memory. These works draw directly on what he witnessed inside the prison: interrogation rooms, shackled prisoners, forced confessions, and executions carried out in and around S-21.

He often worked from specific, repeated memories revisiting the same spaces and events in multiple paintings. The result is less interpretation than reconstruction—images that sit closer to testimony than representation. Nath recollected “I told myself I did not care any longer because I could die any time and I’d rather die than live in such conditions.” Many of these works remain displayed in the former classrooms of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, installed within the very rooms they depict. During my visit to S-21, that proximity becomes difficult to hold at a distance. The boundary between image and site collapses: what is shown is also what surrounds you. The paintings give form to experiences that resist articulation, while also insisting on the physical reality of what occurred within those walls.

Elsewhere in the prison, inscriptions remain carved into the walls, carefully indexed, ‘Building C, First Floor, Room Four, Cell Nine, South Wall, Square 264’. One engraving reads: ឥឡូវនេះខ្ញុំចង់និយាយលាហើយ…ខ្ញុំសូមជូនពរឱ្យអ្នករស់នៅដោយសុភមង្គល “Now I would like to say goodbye…I wish that you live in happiness”. Another, carved into the same wall, one brick across, reads: អូយសម្លាញ់អើយ លាហើយ “Oh my darling, goodbye”. These lives are not merely statistics; they are people reaching forward through time, leaving proof that they have lived, loved, and hoped someone would one day bear witness.

Vann Nath’s work operates within the same impulse. His paintings return to these same spaces of detention and disappearance, refusing abstraction in favour of precise, located memory. Like the inscriptions on the walls, they function as acts of witness—ensuring that what happened is neither reduced to numbers nor allowed to fade into distance.

Nath’s 1998 memoir, A Cambodian Prison Portrait, was among the first detailed written accounts by an S-21 survivor. At a time when documentation was limited and many perpetrators remained unchallenged, the text provided an essential narrative record, bridging personal memory and historical archive. This commitment to testimony extended beyond both memoir and artistic production into direct engagement with justice processes. In collaboration with filmmaker Rithy Panh, Nath appeared in the documentary S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003), which brought together former prisoners and guards. In the film, Nath confronts those who once oversaw his imprisonment. His questioning is measured, controlled, yet persistent: less an expression of anger than a demand for acknowledgment.

Later, Nath became the first survivor of S-21 to give testimony during proceedings at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in 2009. On Day 35 of the trial (29 June 2009), he appeared as a prosecution witness against the former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, and his paintings were entered into evidence. While photography captured the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh in April 1975, the years that followed were defined by the systematic restriction of imagery as a means of control. Within this evidentiary gap, his paintings moved beyond personal recollection to become part of the tribunal record, submitted as visual evidence in the prosecution of Duch.

S-21 resists the distancing effect of history. What occurred there was neither inevitable nor confined to a singular moment in the past. Standing within its rooms, and seeing Nath’s works in situ, makes clear that memory alone is insufficient; it must be actively maintained, interrogated, and sustained. Through his painting and writing, Nath turned survival into testimony that continues to shape how the Cambodian genocide is understood. His work prevents the past from settling into abstraction, insisting instead on presence—the visibility of what occurred, and the responsibility of those who encounter it to bear witness.

In this post Agatha highlights the arty refugee experience of Vann Nath. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

The Flight from Cambodia and the Plight for Justice: Dith Pran shows history from the human perspective

Photographer Dith Pran lived through one of the most tumultuous periods in Cambodia’s history and one of the most devastating consequences of the Cold War. When he was 26, the communist guerrilla group Khmer Rouge began attacking the Kingdom of Cambodia. This triggered a civil war in which the United States—supporting Cambodia’s pro-US government—conducted massive bombing campaigns against the insurgents. These bombings devastated rural regions and displaced roughly a quarter of the population, pushing many people into the arms of the guerrilla movement. In April 1975, after seven years of conflict, the pro-US Khmer Republic fell to the Khmer Rouge, a dire turn for Cambodians like Pran who had cooperated with American forces.

Pol Pot’s brutal “re-education” programs targeted anyone with ties to the former government or to foreign powers. His regime decimated the educated, persecuted religious minorities, and killed people of non-Khmer ethnicity. In all, approximately two million people perished. This is the story of how Dith Pran not only survived the torture and starvation inflicted by the Khmer Rouge but ultimately went on to campaign for justice and advocate for truth through his photographic art.

Dith Pran was born in Siem Reap, Cambodia. After learning French at school and teaching himself English, he began working as a translator for the United States Army. During this time, Pran also became a photographer for New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg. As Schanberg later described, ‘His mission with me in Cambodia was to tell the world what suffering his people were going through in a war that was never necessary’. In 1975, Pran and Schanberg decided to stay behind in Cambodia to cover the fall of the capital, Phnom Penh. Although, fortunately, Pran had managed to get his wife and four children out of the country, Pran was then prevented from leaving. As a man who had worked closely with the US government and US citizens, Pran knew he was in extreme danger. So in order to hide his education from the government, he pretended to have been a taxi driver.

By 1975, Cambodia was in dire economic straits. It had suffered a civil war, the communist government’s closure of banks, and the confiscation of private property. Pol Pot decided the answer lay in a ‘Four-Year Plan’. A programme which stressed the collectivisation and expansion of rice farming. The government demanded an average of three tons of rice per hectare. An unrealistic target, which nevertheless required the mass conscription of labour. Consequently, Dith Pran, alongside many other citizens, were shipped into Labour Camps. There, Pran endured four years of starvation and torture. As one survivor testified, ‘Every day, people died in the village. Every morning, they were hauling away a corpse.’ Pran and his fellow prisoners worked from dawn till dusk. They had to cultivate fields, dig canals, and erect dams with rudimentary equipment on just one spoonful of rice a day.

Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Pran then managed to escape from the labour camp. He trekked forty miles on foot to return to his home town and family, coining the infamous phrase, ‘the killing fields’ as he walked through a countryside covered in clusters of corpses and skeletal remains. His return to Siem Reap was also not the joyful reunion Pran had hoped for. Fifty of his family members were dead. Seeing no reason to remain in Cambodia and fearing his US connections may still cause him trouble, Pran decided to flee to Thailand. After Sydney Schanberg learned that his old friend had managed to escape Cambodia, the reporter flew over to bring Pran back to the US. In 1980 the Cambodian refugee joined the New York Times as a photojournalist.

During his time in the US, Pran used his art to raise awareness about the horrors of the Cambodian genocide. His famous book, Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields, is a compilation of twenty-nine memoirs from victims of Pol Pot’s brutal regime. The book examines the suffering and loss experienced by the contributors as children under the Khmer Rouge. Alongside the book is an online gallery. It consists of photographs taken by Pran during the Cambodian Civil War and the Khmer Rouge’s rule. The images are a moving mixture of deeply human stories. They tell of suffering and loss, but also keep intimate records of the crucial moments of the war. They preserve its terrible events in perpetuity. In one photograph, children are scattered in rubble after the accidental bombing of Neak Long. Another shows a man, Keo Chan, breaking down in tears after losing his wife and ten children. A third depicts a boy soldier, his body barely as big as the gun he’s holding. These images are interspersed with shots of actions and events: a truck full of marines fully clad for battle; Ambassador John Gunther Dean exiting the embassy, suitcase in one hand, Embassy flag rolled under the other arm. These deeply insightful photos tell both a macro and micro story of one of the most turbulent moments in Cambodia’s history. In that way they capture something approaching the essence of the Cambodian experience. Pran’s art brought home the reality of war, both the events and the emotion. His photographs capture the loss, suffering, fear and bewilderment of those who find their lives torn apart. He reveals the unbearable uncertainty faced by people thrust into the fray of history and depicts a world turned upside down, as heavily armoured marines scramble across a children’s football pitch.

After arriving in the US, Pran worked as a staff photographer for The New York Times, focusing on domestic news and human-interest stories. His time in Cambodia honed his skill for empathetic, compelling images in the midst of human chaos. Pran focused on immigrant experiences, such as the 2006 immigrant rights rally in New Jersey. His compositions highlight the individual experience within wider public scenes. In 2002, he photographed children climbing Nathan Rapoport’s “Liberation” sculpture in Jersey City’s Liberty State Park. The photograph evokes themes of hope, freedom and arrival, concepts strongly linked to the immigrant/ refugee experience.

Pran also used photography to help Cambodian refugees directly. As the founder of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, Pran campaigned for the recognition of the Cambodian genocide. This project contributed to the legislation of the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act in 1994. Another crucial part of Pran’s organisation was to use photographic records to help Cambodian refugees find missing family members. Not only did these photographs help to track down lost loved ones, but they were also used to educate the public about the shocking reality of conditions under the Khmer Rouge.

Dith Pran worked for years to bring the perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide to justice. He ensured the story reached as wide an audience as possible. For this work, he received many awards such as the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He was also appointed as a goodwill ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 1985. Pran died from cancer in 2008, but his legacy lives on. A man who fought for the recognition of atrocities, justice for his people, and to expose truth through his photographic art.

Bibliography

https://www.beyondthekillingfields.com/the-book-in-pictures-2/chapter-six-vietnam-pow-coverup/

https://grokipedia.com/page/Dith_Pran

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/nyregion/31dith.html#:~:text=Though%20he%20and%20his%20wife,years%20of%20terror%20as%20children.&text=SKIP%20ADVERTISEMENT-,Dr.,my%20spirit%20will%20be%20happy.%E2%80%9D

https://www.dithpranfoundation.org/

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2008-pt6/html/CRECB-2008-pt6-Pg7699.htm#:~:text=Dith%20worked%20to%20help%20pass,taken%20place%20around%20the%20world

https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/cambodia/forced-labor-and-collectivization

https://hmh.org/library/research/genocide-in-cambodia-guide/

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/dith-pran

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2008/4/3/killing-fields-photojournalist-dies#:~:text=%E2%80%9CPran%20was%20a%20special%20person,in%20the%20US%20in%201980.&text=%E2%80%9CPran%20was%20my%20brother%2C%20that’s,for%20those%20who%20still%20suffer.%E2%80%9D

In this post Nancy highlights the arty refugee experience of Dith Pran. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

An explosion rips through Hazmieh, a leafy, well-heeled suburb of Beirut. Plumes of smoke billow from the smoldering wreck of an Austin 1100. Mangled scraps of metal lie scattered on the street, and the air is choked with ash. The blackened body of a young girl, thrown meters from the baking heap, is shrivelling in the sun. The year is 1972, Lebanon is sweltering, and a man has been assassinated. The perpetrators are the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service. Their target is Ghassan Kanafani–refugee, writer, revolutionary.

Ghassan Kanafani was born in 1936 in Acre, a coastal city in the north of Palestine that radiates Crusader history. Kanafani’s Palestine was a turbulent one; in the year of his birth, the local Arab population rose in revolt against the British, who had been governing Palestine as a League of Nations mandate. The Arabs objected to British plans, formally articulated in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, to create a national home for Jewish immigrants on their lands. The Kanafani family moved to Jaffa, south of Acre, in 1938, and the Arab revolt was crushed.

But war is never absent for long in the Holy Land. By 1948, sectarian clashes between British authorities, Jewish insurgents and Arab factions had boiled over into vicious armed conflict. The Jewish insurgents won out, established the State of Israel and scattered roughly 700,000 Palestinians to the neighbouring Arab countries–a catastrophe Palestinians know as “the Nakba.” Kanafani, then twelve years old, fled with his family to Damascus, never to see his native land again.

The experience of expulsion and exile haunts Kanafani’s literary imagination. In his first novel, Men in the Sun, he narrates three Palestinian men’s tragic quest to smuggle themselves into Kuwait, where they imagine great opportunities lying in store. The three men end up suffocating to death in an empty water tank, hidden in the truck of a smuggler. Kanafani’s work limns the grueling poverty of the Nakba generation, the listlessness of young Palestinians ripped from their homes, and the cynicism of those who exploit Palestine’s tragedy for their own ends.

But Kanafani’s literature is not just one of loss and despair; it is also one of resistance and reckoning. In his epistolary fiction “Letter from Gaza,” Kanafani imagines a young Palestinian rejecting an offer to study at a California university. “I won’t follow you to ‘the land where there is greenery, water and lovely faces’ as you wrote. No, I’ll stay here, and I won’t ever leave,” the young man tells his confidant, the expatriate Mustapha. At the end of the letter, the author entreats Mustapha to return to Gaza and rediscover the people he has left behind. To be Palestinian for Kanafani was to remain and to resist, a concept Palestinians call sumud.

Kanafani’s spirit of resistance led him into politics, where he excelled as a communicator. Mentored by George Habash, an influential Palestinian Christian politician, Kanafani joined the ranks of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a militant leftist group that formed the radical wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization. A handsome, square-jawed man, with lush black hair, a well-groomed chevron moustache and intense, globular eyes, his image became synonymous with Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule. Kanafani wrote prodigiously for Palestinian magazines, excoriated Israel’s occupation in fluent English to foreign press and dismissed the prospect of a peaceful settlement with Israeli leaders. In an interview with Australian journalist Richard Carlton, Kanafani memorably likened negotiations with Israel to a “conversation between the sword and the neck”

Kanafani’s abrasive activism garnered him the attention of Israeli officials, who denounced him as a terrorist. Kanafani did not shy away from defending acts of terror, though there is no evidence he participated in or commanded any violent action himself. Kanafani lauded the killing of 26 people in the Lod airport massacre, committed by the Japanese Red Army in concert with the PFLP, in July 1972. Just days after the killings in Lod, Mossad assassins booby-trapped his car. Then, on a fateful summer morning, Kanafani climbed into the grey Austin 1100 with his niece Lamees and started the engine, thereby setting off the bomb that killed them both. He was 36. Lamees was 17.

The Israeli press claimed that Kanafani’s death was retribution for the 1972 Lod attack, though some in the country have challenged that interpretation and suggest that he was marked for killing much earlier. In any case, Kanafani was one of the first in a spree of Israeli assassinations targeting PFLP and PLO leaders, a campaign Israeli officials stepped up following the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics the same year. Kanafani was unique, however, among targets of Israeli assassinations, who were usually commandos or military leaders. The Mossad has never accepted responsibility for Kanafani’s death, much less explained its reasons for targeting him.

Although he died young, Kanafani has enjoyed a long afterlife as a literary figure and cultural icon. Along with poet Mahmoud Darwish, he is considered to have provided Palestine’s definitive contribution to the modern Arab literary canon. Monuments to Kanafani have gone up, including in his native Acre, though that monument was ultimately removed on the instructions of right-wing Israeli politicians.

Contemporaries of Kanafani described him as an angry man, enraged by the loss of his homeland. This was a man who endured the humiliation and squalor of Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon, who lived most of his years as a citizen of nowhere, shunted from country to country. It’s not surprising that Kanafani’s work reveals a deep pessimism, pessimism forged by a life lived in disappointment–dissapointment at Israeli Jews who expelled his family and forbad them from returning, disappointment at the Palestinian leadership for its feebleness, disappointment at the Arab states that largely failed to look after the flood of Arab arrivals. In 1960, Kanafani wrote in his diary, “The only thing we know is that tomorrow will be no better than today, and that we are waiting on the banks, yearning, for a boat that will not come. We are sentenced to be separated from everything–except from our own destruction.” In a sense, there is no better summation of his worldview.

Though the importance of the Israel-Palestine conflict in global politics and society has grown since the summer of 1972, the prospects of a peace for two peoples seems only to have diminished. As settlers nibble away land in the West Bank, and Gaza resembles a crater of the moon, the dream of a Palestine for Palestinians seems to be slipping, day by day, farther out of reach. Nevertheless, ideas are stubborn things, inhabited by people with passions, desires and irrationalities. The boat never came for Ghassan Kanafani, or for the millions of refugees of his generation who ended their days outside of Palestine. Yet around the world, in the West Bank and in Gaza, there are millions more Palestinians gathered along the banks, waiting.

In this post Baybars highlights the arty refugee experience of Kafani. He is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. He also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Back Story

Dina Nayeri: Writer, Truth-Teller, and Essential Voice

Dina Nayeri is a writer whose work has become central to contemporary conversations about refugees, identity, and telling diverse stories. She was born in Isfahan in 1979 and left Iran as a child after her family faced religious persecution. She spent time in Dubai and Rome as an asylum seeker before arriving in the United States and spending time in refugee hostels before becoming an American citizen at age 15. Since then, Nayeri has lived in the Netherlands, England, and Scotland. This refugee experience and journey around the world undeniably forms how she understands who gets to tell their story, who gets heard, and who is dismissed. It is also the foundation of a body of work that has helped shift how readers think about displacement.

Nayeri completed her undergraduate degree at Princeton University and later continued her studies at Harvard. After several years in strategy consulting in New York, she turned from business to literary art, and entered the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her route into professional writing was built through rigorous craft training and a willingness to stay with difficult questions about power, truth, and representation. Her career has been supported and rewarded by major institutions including the National Endowment for the Arts, UNESCO and the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Nayeri now shares and passes on her writing expertise by teaching at St Andrew’s University. She called this process of helping others find their voices, shape narrative, and build creative practices as “the point of everything.”

Dina Nayeri’s writing, including novels, short stories, essays, and plays, is distinct, moving, and thought provoking. She describes her love for “building tight, character-driven narratives, vanishing into other voices, and reading and writing stories with catastrophe at the centre.” Nayeri is widely recognised and taught in schools for her masterful storytelling about the refugee experience, but she writes about more than that. Her work tackles challenging and ambiguous topics like trust, power, vulnerability, pain and change. She particularly enjoys delving into the drama of the messy lives of flawed people.

Her published work spans novels, memoir, reportage and essays. ‘A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea’, her first novel, was published in 2013 and has been translated into fourteen languages. It introduced her interest in character driven storytelling and in the fractured identities that arise from political upheaval. ‘Refuge’, her second novel, arrived in 2017. It alternates between a daughter who left Iran and a father who stayed behind. The structure mirrors the emotional distance between them and also reflects the fragmented nature of migrant experience. Readers move between present day scenes and flashbacks across several cities. The novel is semi autobiographical and tracks closely with elements of Nayeri’s own life. It also looks outwards at the European refugee crisis and at how Iranian migrants navigate new cultures while trying to maintain ties to the past.

In 2019, she published ‘The Ungrateful Refugee’, the book that made her a widely recognised voice in public debates about asylum. It grew out of a Guardian long read that went viral and challenged the idea that refugees owe gratitude to the countries that accept them. The book mixes memoir, travel, interviews and analysis. It focuses on the expectations placed on displaced people to perform trauma or assimilation in ways that satisfy bureaucracies and public opinion. The book was shortlisted for major prizes, translated widely and taught in schools and universities. It also led many journalists and readers to rethink how refugee stories are framed in media and policy conversations.

Her next project, ‘The Waiting Place’ (2020), examined the experience of young refugees living in limbo in camps and transit zones. It took her back into spaces that she once occupied as a child and asked how temporary sites of survival become long term realities. The book is smaller in scale than her major works but expands her toolkit as someone who documents the lived consequences of political decisions.

In 2023 she published ‘Who Gets Believed?’, which investigates how institutions decide which stories are credible. The book looks at asylum interviews, courtrooms, hospitals and other systems where people must convince strangers of their own truth. It blends reporting with philosophy and personal experience and shows how disbelief shapes the lives of migrants, whistleblowers, survivors and anyone whose story does not fit expected templates. The book was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction and received international attention for its clear analysis of how credibility is granted or denied.

Nayeri has also announced an upcoming book called ‘A Happy Death’.

Throughout this body of work, Nayeri refuses to simplify motives, emotions, truths, and questions. This approach resonates strongly with younger readers who want journalism and literature that avoids easy moral binaries. She writes with urgency but also with a critical awareness of how stories get constructed and consumed.

Her essays have appeared in leading publications including the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Granta, Vice, Marie Claire, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal and many others. These pieces often examine contemporary refugee policies, personal narratives from camps across Europe and the Middle East, and displacement. She is widely read not only because of her subject matter but because her voice is clear, grounded, and innovative.

There are various elements which make Nayeri’s writing distinctive. She finds the relatable elements of individual stories. For example, in ‘The Ungrateful Refugee’, she depicts how power is enforced by making people wait in immigration and asylum systems. She has explained how being subjected to this power-through-waiting experience is a universal experience, using the examples of waiting inside during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pain of a waiting lover in Roland Barthes’s ‘A Lover’s Discourse’. Another strength of her work is the ability to combine real experiences, both hers and others, and adapt them into emotive fictional narratives. An example of this is how she adapted her own relationship with her father for her book ‘Refuge’. Her work also is defined by her awareness to the implications and roles of the written word. She has spoken about how some voices and heard while others are doubted, how some stories are more easily accepted, and what it takes for a story to be taken seriously. This awareness informs her approach to writing. Furthermore, her commitment to deconstructing misconceptions about immigrants and appealing to people’s empathy for a human narrative is central to her writing.

Dina Nayeri’s work explores the refugee experience across geography and diversity, while also exploring wide questions of human emotions and relationships. Her writing maintains a careful balance between specific personal experiences and broader themes, giving her stories both intimacy and universality. Her prose is clear, grounded in real lives, and combines compelling storytelling with insight into social and cultural realities, making her one of the most important contemporary voices on displacement, and belonging, and life in the modern world.

In this post Willow highlights the arty refugee experience of Dina Nayeri. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

Saddat Hassan Manto was arguably the most influential yet controversial writer during the time of the India and Pakistan partition. Although Manto did not want to leave his residence in Bombay, the growing pressure around being muslim forced him to migrate to Pakistan in 1948. The involuntary migration was due to fear surrounding political violence. Through his literature he voiced the harsh yet truthful experiences of being a refugee during the partition amidst the violence. The displacement of millions is somewhat unheard of to the western world, however through Manto’s explicit work, political violence and pain are outlined clearly. The most controversial book Manto wrote, that I will discuss, is called ‘Thanda Gosht’ which translates to cold flesh. The harrowing pain exhibited in Manto’s fictions through his characters embody the social realities of the post-colonial rule.

After a traumatic partition and growing tensions, Manto decided to leave Bombay India and catch a train to Lahore Pakistan where he was one of the millions of people who had become ‘muhajirs’ which translated to migrant. Manto was originally reluctant to India but the pain and brutal absurdity which came in the forms of murder waves against the minorities, led him to leave in hopes of a safer life. The feeling of displacement and witnessing of brutality was weaved into Manto’s fictions as he shared the shocking truth through stories. Manto lamented the millions of lives lost as a moral tragedy rather than a death toll, which he argued dehumanised them from the essence of life. Manto challenged the narrative of there being a pride in suffering and explicitly states throughout all his literature that millions of lives were violently lost for ‘nothing’.

Manto situated his frustrations and pain into literature. One of his most famous pieces called ‘Toba Tek Singh’ was set in a Lahore mental asylum a couple of years after the partition. The authorities or arguably totalitarians decided to switch Hindu and Sikh patients with Muslum patents from Indian Asylums. The story criticises policy makers and politicians through a satire approach as the inmates exhibit more sanity through questioning the arbitrary borders and loss of identity and belonging. Another book written by Manto is called ‘Khol Do’ which shows an elderly man named Sirajuddin who is panicking and searching for his daughter in a refugee camp. Some workers promise to find her and they eventually bring an unconscious girl to the hospital. The father asks the doctor to open (khol do) the window to let in fresh air but Sakina responds to the command and repeats khol do so that the trauma and violence she has faced can be known and witnessed.

One of the most controversial pieces to have been written and published in Pakistan is a book by Manto called, ‘Thanda Gosht’ which translates to cold flesh. This story led to obscenity charges. The story is that a Sikh man returns home to his mistress after participating in riots. He is dismissive of her and is physically unresponsive. The mistress suspects infidelity and stabs him with a dagger. As he slowly dies he confesses to brutal crimes. He has abducted a young muslim girl during the riots and attempted a terrible act only to discover she was dead. The grim reality of attempting to violate a corpse made him unable to act physically with his mistress. The cold flesh symbolises both the girl’s dead body and the death of his own morality and humanity. Manto outlined the loss of human empathy and how communal hate allows people to unlock a monster identity that cannot see between life, desire and death. The themes of sexual violence and necrophilis were considered a breach if public morality during post-partition. Even though the cases were financially draining for Manto, he defended his work through arguing that they were social reality and that all he has done is trapped the truths of reality into a book so that no one can forget the atrocities. As a writer Manto argued until his last breath that a writer’s duty is to expose the truth no matter how daring or uncomfortable.

History has always been a fictitious argument of whose story is more credible or legitimate in certain circumstances. When we look at who holds knowledge that is accessed globally comes back to the Global North, in other words it is western legitimised knowledge. Many view the partition between India and Pakistan as a victorious occasion where everyone supposedly ‘got what they wanted’ and happily boarded trains to enter their news homes. Manto gives us a reality which is far from the Global North perspective. His literature gives us a portal to delve into the realities of partition and witness alongside him in his displacement journey what he has encountered from both sides of the border. Murder, violence and attacks on the vulnerable were normal everyday occurrences as people battled to survive in a society stimulated by hate. Death trains were common, which were massacres on innocent families trying to cross the border and all their valuables were stolen. No justice prevailed and society hid and ran to protect themselves of the dehumanised society that partition had formed,

Manto is remembered as a humanitarian who has written history from an uncomfortably truthful lens. His displacement was a journey of witnessing horrendous crimes against humanity and living in a society that had created monsters, pain and violence. Manto exhibits how even though literature can be fictional it can also be the closest thing we have to the truth. Even today as we read about Manto and his brave stances in a controlling society, we feel uncomfortable by the graphics of such fictions but simultaneously grateful for such a voice that has portrayed the truth not a tinted version. The millions that were murdered and displaced were people with voices and thoughts not facts and figures. Saadat Hasan Manto was a brave figure who accounts for intimate knowledge known of the India and Pakistan partition. Manto’s displacement has allowed millions across the globe to witness the reality of the crimes and atrocities during the partition.

In this post Numra highlights the arty refugee experience of Sadat Manto. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

“I carry the banner of the trauma./War child, child without a mama,/still fighting in the saga.”

Framed by melodious vocal harmonies and driven by an Afro-hip-hop beat, these are the poignant lyrics of Emmanuel Jal’s ‘Forced to Sin’. In thirteen words alone, he creates a profoundly succinct, communicable, and yet moving summary of his life and work. His violent allusions create a tone of despair that contrasts with the joy of childhood. Unfortunately, for Jal, his own was filled with no such joy. He was born at some point around the start of 1980, entering a world of rising tension and conflict that peaked in 1983 with the Second Sudanese Civil War - an event that changed the course of his life and many others in ways hard to imagine. Since then Jal has lost family and friends, fled and faced war, and lived on the streets to fend for himself. However, despite this suffering he has achieved great things, winning awards for his music, playing alongside some of the biggest names in the industry, and being a prominent figure in political change and charity work for decades.

Emmanuel Jal was born to a Nuer family in the village of Tonj, Warrap State in the Bahr el Ghazal region of then Sudan. The exact date of his birth is sadly unknown, as it was undocumented, but Jal has taken the 1st of January 1980 to be his birthday. At this time, Sudan was an incredibly divided nation with a dictatorial leader (Gaafar Mohamed el-Nimeiri) who allowed economic failure and poverty to take a grasp of the nation, as well as promoting religious instability between the largely Muslim population in the North and the largely Christian population in the South. Along with political turmoil surrounding the control of oil fields within the country, Gaafar Mohamed el-Nimeiri’s imposition of Sharia law upon the entirety of Sudan ignited the raging fire that was the Second Sudanese Civil War.

Jal’s story begins here. After the outbreak of war, his father joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to fight the oppressive Sudanese government. In the years that followed, Jal witnessed the horrors of war. He experienced the murder of his mother at the hands of the Sudanese government and saw terrible crimes committed against his aunt.

Following this emotional turmoil, Jal joined other Sudanese children in fleeing to Ethiopia in hopes of education, opportunity, and a better life. However, in doing so he was recruited by the SPLA and subsequently trained as a child soldier.

Reflecting on this, Jal has commented on the anger he felt at the time which led him to have faith in the SPLA’s cause. Much like the other children around him, he wanted revenge for what had happened to his family. The SPLA abused the trauma of these children and forced them into conflict. They were used as soldiers in Ethiopia until war broke out there, forcing the child soldiers to return to Sudan.

The return to Sudan did not give the children peace. They were forced to continue to fight the Sudanese government. Eventually, Jal and other child soldiers around him managed to escape the clutches of the SPLA and reach the Sudanese village of Waat. Here he was presented with what he considers to be the major turning point in his life: British aid worker, Emma McCune.

With her work, McCune helped over 150 Sudanese children escape the war-torn country, with one of them being Jal. She smuggled him into Kenya where he was able to live in Nairobi and access education, allowing him to lead a normal life away from war.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of Jal’s obstacles. While living in Kenya, he was made homeless after the death of McCune in 1993, as her husband threw Jal out onto the streets. He was then forced to live in the slums of Nairobi, yet again a child alone having to fight for himself.

But Nairobi was not only a place of hardship for Jal; in many ways, it was the key to his later success. It was at this stage in his life that he discovered hip-hop. He was enthralled by the story telling nature of American hip-hop music and was inspired to use it to tell his own story. It was in Nairobi that he began to make his own music, collaborating with the people around him and sharing his story with his audiences.

Simultaneously with his musical journey, Jal became involved in his local community, doing charity work raising money for children and refugees. This charity work demonstrates a fundamental element of music for him, with Jal believing that the key agenda of his music is to help others through raising awareness of the horrors of war and the part that children all too often play in it. Taking this philosophy of charity and helping those who are in need, he soon rose to a small level of fame, largely thanks to the release of his first single “All We Need Is Jesus” that came out in 2005. From then on Jal’s music career took off.

He released his first album ‘Gua’ in 2005. In Sudanese Arabic, ‘Gua’ means peace or power, symbolising Jal’s mission: There is power in music and the stories we tell with it, so we should use this for good. Upon listening to Gua, Jal’s American Hip-Hop influence is very apparent through some of the beats he uses and the tone of voice in which he raps. However, the melodies he incorporates throughout, in addition to the multiple languages in which he delivers his lyrics, make his musical background in African countries clear to the listener. This fusion of styles is a defining characteristic of his music. In addition to this, his lyrics display his ambition for creating a better world, with a verse in the song ‘Gua’ encapsulating this sentiment: “I can’t wait, I can’t wait for that day/When I see no more tears, no more fear, no cry/No tribalism, nepotism and racism in my motherland”.

Ever since the release of his first album, Jal has been on an upward trajectory. His music has spread further, become more popular, and given him tremendous success. In 2005 he won an award for best international artist at the American Gospel Music Awards, and then in 2008 he played at the Nelson Mandela 90th Birthday Tribute concert, held in Hyde Park, alongside A-list artists such as Amy Winehouse and Sam Smith.

However, music is far from his only success. During 2006, Jal founded an informal charity group that later in 2009 became the registered charity organisation Gua Africa. The organisation aims to improve educational opportunities for people that are affected by war and conflict in East Africa. Gua Africa has carried out a range of amazing projects over the years, from providing children with scholarships to actually building schools. Jal’s charity work has led to him winning numerous international awards such as: Vaclav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent 2018, Desmond Tutu Reconciliation Award 2017, Hero in the global campaign against violent extremism – UNESCO 2016, The Hunt Humanitarian Award, The Dresden Peace Prize, The Common Ground Award and been recognised by Ban Ki Moon at the UN for his activism.

Jal moved to Toronto in 2012 and still lives there today, having now become a citizen of the country. Talking on the topic, he has been quoted as saying “I grew up in a warzone in South Sudan and became a child soldier, wielding an AK-47 at seven years old. But here in Canada, I don’t feel like I have to purchase a gun to feel safe…I came to Canada with nothing, and now I have so much.”

After such a perilous journey from war in South Sudan, to the streets of Nairobi, and finally to a music studio in Toronto, Emmanuel Jal has finally settled and made a home. When looking at this story, there is one clear factor that has allowed him to make so much of his life despite his desperate beginnings: music. Jal’s journey tells us how important art is, not just in how it can bring an individual money and fame, but through how it can cause happiness and lead to opportunity in others.

One article cannot encapsulate Emmanuel Jal’s life, and neither can it encapsulate the extent of his achievements, but in writing this I want to demonstrate the power of the arts, and I hope to be a part of the message that he is trying to convey. This being said, no one can put it better than Jal himself, so I want to leave you with a comment from a TED Talk that he did in 2009: “So one thing I know about music: music is the only thing that has power to enter your cell system, your mind, your heart, influence your soul and your spirit, and can even influence the way you live without even you knowing.”

Resources list

Jal, E. (2009). Transcript of ‘The music of a war child’. TED. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/emmanuel_jal_the_music_of_a_war_child/transcript.

Emmanueljal.com. (2022). Emmanuel Jal – South Sudanese-Canadian artist, actor, former child soldier, and political activist. [online] Available at:

https://emmanueljal.com/

.

Afropop Worldwide. (2025). Afropop Worldwide | Emmanuel Jal: Life Lessons From a Survivor. [online] Available at: https://www.afropop.org/articles/emmanuel-jal-life-lessons-from-a-survivor [Accessed 19 Dec. 2025].

World Economic Forum. (2024). Emmanuel Jal. [online] Available at: https://www.weforum.org/people/emmanuel-jal/.

In this post Baybars highlights the arty refugee experience of Emmanuel Jal. He is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. He also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gaming art here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

Behrouz Boochani is a journalist, writer, and human rights activist. Born in 1983 to a Kurdish family in Ilam, Iran, he began his journalism career at university, writing for newspapers. He later founded Werya, a bilingual Kurdish-Persian magazine dedicated to preserving Kurdish culture and identity. Iranian authorities deemed this a “deviant movement,” arresting Werya’s members and forcing Boochani to flee to Southeast Asia.

While attempting to seek asylum in Australia by boat from Indonesia, Boochani was intercepted by the Australian Navy and sent to the offshore detention center on Manus Island, where he was imprisoned from 2013 to 2019. There, he endured inhumane treatment, including humiliation and abuse. Determined to expose the conditions inside the camp, he bribed a guard to obtain a secret mobile phone, using WhatsApp to document human rights violations. He relayed this information to news outlets like The Guardian, even while still imprisoned.

In 2018, Boochani compiled his experiences into No Friend but the Mountains, a book blending poetry and prose to reveal the brutal reality of life as a refugee in offshore detention. He also used his phone to film Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time, a documentary capturing daily life in the camp.

In 2019, Boochani traveled to New Zealand for a literary festival and was granted refugee status, allowing him to remain indefinitely. He continues to write about his own experiences and advocate for Iranian refugees through articles, books, and plays. In 2022, he published Freedom, Only Freedom, a collection of personal reflections alongside essays from human rights activists, political figures, and writers.

In this post Nyika highlights the arty refugee experience of Behrouz Boochani. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

Mostafa ‘Moz’ Azimitabar is a Kurdish-Iranian refugee, artist, and human rights advocate.

Moz was born into a Kurdish family in Iran in 1986. After speaking out against the oppression of Kurds, he faced persecution by the Iranian government. Moz was forced to flee.

He endured a dangerous journey as he travelled across the ocean on a small boat and arrived in Australia in July 2013. In line with Australia’s stringent immigration laws, Moz was taken to an offshore detention centre to be processed as an asylum seeker. He spent the next eight years there and was only released after being granted refugee status in January 2021.

It was during these eight years that Moz discovered his talent as an artist. When an officer in the detention centre refused his request for paint, Moz returned to his room and picked up a toothbrush and some coffee. With these simple tools, he began to paint.

The self-portrait Moz created is a testament to his experience in detention. He named the piece after his government identification number – “KNS088” – as a powerful reminder that he is a person, not a number.

In 2022, KNS088 was short-listed for Australia’s most prestigious portrait prize, the Archibald Prize. Moz’s story became known around the world, and he used the opportunity to advocate for refugee rights in Australia.

Moz is now a central figure in his community in Sydney. He continues to paint and works for a charity helping victims of domestic violence.

However, Moz still feels stuck in limbo. He must reapply for his refugee visa every six months, and constantly fears that it will not be reissued. He is campaigning for a change in the law to grant refugees permanent residency. In his own words, “to not know if you will ever be safe is another kind of torture.”

In this post Georgia highlights the arty refugee experience of Mostafa ‘Moz’ Azimitabar. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gift shop here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

Home, Displaced: Vulindlela Nyoni's Artwork Bringing Zimbabwean Refugee Realities to Light

‘We cannot go home’. A bird house sits encircled by barbed wire. In the background, the familiar shape of Table Mountain looms - a poignant juxtaposition of shelter and barrier, of new horizons and restricted freedom. A tension engulfs the piece, that of what this house, its wired condition and geographical placement represents. Look deeper and you’ll find the story of a refugee and broader community shaped by displacement, belonging, and reimagining home.

The print 'Settling In' captures a haunting self-portrait: Nyoni's head, untethered from its body, floats in liminal space - capturing the liminal existence of those caught between homes, between places, between identities.

These pieces emerge from Nyoni's personal journey as a Zimbabwean refugee in South Africa. After fleeing instability under Mugabe’s regime in 1995, Nyoni has lived and worked in Pietermaritzburg, becoming a renowned printmaker, art professor and academic. While powerful personal narrative, his pieces also speak to universal themes of dislocation and belonging. “These works are about leaving home and finding new places," he explained to ‘The Witness’, "I have tried to find new ways of showing what space means to me, what place means to me and the thoughts that come to mind when you leave places".

The complexity of this displacement reverberates through Nyoni's recent doctoral work, where he describes his "daily experience is that of an in-between diasporic subjectivity." His art navigates the intersecting challenges of being both Black and foreign in post-apartheid South Africa, while maintaining connections to a Zimbabwe in ongoing conflict. These works embody what he calls "the inner questions of belonging, home and nostalgia that have been such an integral part of my lived reality" (Nyoni 2024:6)." In short, Nyoni focuses on the complex experiences of ‘being’ and existing as a diasporic subject.

Nyoni is an academic, currently finishing his PhD in Visual Art which focuses on collaborative printmaking, has worked as a professor and is currently head of Fine Arts at Nelson Mandela Bay University. Nyoni is a distinguished artist who has showcased his work extensively through various exhibitions at the national level, including his recent solo exhibition titled "ERRANT" held at the GUS Gallery in Stellenbosch, another at ArtSpace Berlin, Germany in 2009, Earthbound at the Printmakers’ Gallery, Arkansas State University in the USA 2009; Settling In at the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and Transient Likeness at the Tatham Art Gallery. He has also acted as both a national and regional judge for prominent art competitions such as the Sanlam Portrait Award, Absa Atelier, and Sasol New Signatures.

The Zimbabwean Exodus and Realities of Displacement

Picture Zimbabwe in the 1990s: a land beginning to unravel under Robert Mugabe's iron grip. Born in Chirumanzu, Zimbabwe, Nyoni spent his childhood and early adult years across the midlands and capital city, Harare. As his homeland descended into crisis, he sought refuge in South Africa. The Zimbabwe he left behind was a country in conflict - where hyperinflation meant basic groceries could cost millions, where protests filled streets only to be met with state violence, and where unemployment soared past 70% (Amnesty International 1993; Zimbabwe Country Analysis Report 2014). This economic and socio-political instability triggered an exodus as Zimbabweans crossed borders in search of stability and opportunity.

South Africa, directly below Zimbabwe, has become a primary destination for migrants seeking refuge. Yet the promise of sanctuary often collides with harsh realities: widespread unemployment, limited economic opportunities, and a growing undercurrent of hostility toward migrants (see Landau 2008). This antagonism manifests as 'Afrophobia' - a particular strain of xenophobia directed at African migrants - which permeates social, economic, and political spheres (Cirolia, Nyamnjoh & Hall 2021; 2022). Through his artwork, Nyoni grapples with these complex dimensions of displacement, creating pieces that speak not only to his personal journey but also to the collective experience of Zimbabweans carving out lives in South Africa.

Exploring Dislocation, Alienation and a Displaced Sense of ‘Home’

In these two pieces described in the introduction, Nyoni is expressing this experience of displacement. Moving, changing, shifting – these images tie in our understandings of displacement through his own perspective. He describes the work as an expression of flux, of ‘homelessness’ (Nyoni 2018). The birdhouse strangled by wire seeks to bring forward an idea of ‘not being at home’ that is a lived experience of confinement, being restricted and constrained. His head is physically dislocated, unsettled while simultaneously trying to become settled.

His other artworks, such as the series on ‘Ghost Chairs’, similarly expresses feelings of identity and absence through evocative images. The chairs are ‘ghostly’, both there and not, becoming symbols that call attention to the social, historical and emotional landscapes they occupy. His installation of ‘Murmuration’ with hundreds of birds taking flight across dissected pieces of cloth, speaks to narratives of movement and “migration of labour to centres of capital” (Lemu, 2015).

While these pieces emerge from Nyoni's personal experience, they resonate deeply with anyone who has experienced forced migration. Through his careful manipulation of symbols and space, Nyoni creates a visual language that captures the tension between seeking sanctuary and feeling perpetually out of place.

Speaking Back: Critiquing Power through Art

While displacement remains a central theme, Nyoni's work extends beyond personal exodus to offer pointed commentary on Zimbabwe's political landscape. His pieces ‘Don’t Believe Everything You See on TV’, ‘Market Upturn’ and ‘The Honourable Mr M’ present a powerful critique of Zimbabwean leadership and governance: both on the left and right, a central figure sits on a chair, positioned above two now-valueless Zimbabwean dollar. The left figure sits cross-armed beneath a blaring television, while the right-hand figure points towards the upturned bricks scattered above him. The figures wear masks adorned with rooster crests - a deliberate echo of the ZANU-PF rulers - but they are rendered blind. Through this imagery, Nyoni suggests Zimbabwe's leaders have become performative actors, recycling empty rhetoric while remaining wilfully unseeing to the nation's mounting crises suggested by the upturned bricks and foregrounded currency. Nyoni speaks to South African politics, too, his print of overlaid houses on the cover of ‘Quantitative History and Uncharted People: Case Studies from the South African Past’.

This piece exemplifies how Nyoni uses his art not just to document displacement, but to challenge the power structures that create it. His work becomes a form of resistance, speaking truth to power through carefully chosen symbols and compositions that reveal the disconnect between leadership and reality in contemporary Zimbabwe.

Conclusion: Considering Nyoni’s Art

Vulindlela Nyoni’s artwork serves as a poignant reflection on the complex realities of displacement. Drawing from his personal experience as a Zimbabwean refugee in South Africa, his works explore themes of forced movement, alienation, and the search for a sense of "home." Nyoni captures the emotional and psychological turbulence faced by migrants caught between worlds. His art speaks not only to his individual journey but to the broader experiences of those displaced by political, economic, and social turmoil. His work extends beyond personal narrative, critiquing both Zimbabwean and South African political landscapes, using his visual language as a form of resistance to power structures that perpetuate displacement. Through his intricate compositions, Nyoni challenges the status quo, offering a compelling commentary on the broader themes of migration, governance, and social injustice.

Resource List

United Nations Zimbabwe Country Analysis Report 2014.

Landau, L. 2008. Migration in the Southern African Development Community: Zimbabwean Migrants in South Africa. Centre for Migration Studies, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Tatham Art Gallery, 2009. People and places. Art: Leaving home and finding new spaces. The Witness. Available online: https://witness.co.za/archive/2009/05/06/people-and-places-20150430/.

Nyamnjoh, H., Hall, S., & Cirolia, L.R. 2022. Precarity, Permits, and Prayers: “Working Practices” of Congolese Asylum-Seeking Women in Cape Town. In Africa Spectrum, 57(1): 30-49.

Nyamnjoh, H., Hall, S. & Cirolia, L.R. 2021. Remittance micro-worlds and migrant infrastructure: Circulations, disruptions, and the movement of money. In Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47(1): 63-76.

Lemu, M. 2015. What lies behind the idea of erring? The Artist as Errant. Available online: https://contemporaryand.com/magazines/vuli-nyoni-the-artist-as-errant/.

In this post Sophia highlights the arty refugee experience of Vulindlela Nyoni. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gift shop here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

György Ligeti was a Hungarian- Austrian composer, whose life was marred by conflict and tragedy, which echoes through his music. He was born in 1923 in Transylvania, to a Jewish family. At the age of 13, he began to take piano lessons, and was accepted into Cluj Conservatory as a student composer when he was 18. However, his studies were violently cut short in 1944, when the Nazi regime recruited him as a forced labour. His brother and father were murdered in the holocaust. The second major upheaval of Ligeti’s life occurred in 1956, when the Hungarian Revolution forced him and his wife to flee to Vienna. In his escape, he had to leave much of his music behind. Perhaps, this provided him with a necessary blank slate, and separation from the trauma of his youth. Ligeti would go on to revolutionise modern, electronic music, by bringing electronic innovations to orchestral music for the first time.

The conflict that marred his early life can be heard in his later music: textual and microtonal, it can feel alienating and other worldly, yet also strangely familiar. Time and mortality are recurring themes: one piece- Poème Symphonique- features one hundred metronomes wound up and set to random tempos on stage. The ticks slowly die off, until only one is left standing. Eventually, the final metronome omits the inevitable, final tick. Ligeti was closely involved with the rising electronic movement in the 1960s and was influenced by the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen. However, he rejected the use of electronic instruments to create artificial sounds, instead taking the textual sound of electronic music, and reproducing it with physical instruments. Despite its resounding echoes of trauma and morality, his music is always experimental and forward looking. Sometimes, there is a sense of comedy and playfulness in its absurdity. Strange uncertainty characterises much of his music. This ambiguity is, for Ligeti, profoundly human.

Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/03/how-gyorgy-ligeti-soundtracked-2001-inspired-radiohead-and-composed-music-like-a-knife-through-stalins-heart

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gyorgy-Ligeti

György Ligeti | Hungarian Avant-Garde Composer | Britannica

https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/gyoergy-ligeti/

https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2012/aug/27/gyorgy-ligeti-contemporary-music-guide

In this post Isobel highlights the arty refugee experience of György Ligeti. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gift shop here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

Laila Ajjawi, a young Palestinian artist and activist, is making waves with her murals in Jordan. Her colourful designs bear social commentary on women’s rights and refugee conditions. She was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp outside the Jordanian city of Irbid. Although she was born and has lived her whole life in Jordan, she considers the Palestinian city of Jenin her home. Laila’s identity as a Palestinian refugee is a strong theme in her murals, stressing her connection to her homeland and her wish to return. Her work not only colours public spaces but sparks conversations about gender equality and refugee rights.

Palestinian Refugees in Jordan

The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 (or Nakba in Arabic meaning Catastrophe) led to the displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians, many of whom fled to neighbouring countries, namely Jordan. Jordan hosts more than two million registered Palestinian refugees, the largest number in any UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) field site. Today approximately 18% of these refugees live in refugee camps across the country. Irbid refugee camp, where Laila was born, was established in 1951 and initially set up to house refugees displaced in 1948 (UNRWA 2016). In the beginning, Irbid refugee camp housed around 4,000 refugees but over the decades the camp has grown. Today it blends in with some urban quarters of Irbid city and houses around 25,000 refugees (UNRWA 2023). Palestinian refugees in Jordan face systemic discrimination. Whilst many have Jordanian citizenship, there are almost 370,000 who remain stateless, mainly Gazans who fled after the 1967 war. According to Human Rights Watch, since 1988 and particularly over the last few years, the Jordanian government have been taking away Jordanian nationality from its citizens without notice and arbitrarily making them stateless (Human Rights Watch 2010). As a result, these refugees do not have Jordanian identification numbers which excludes them from accessing health care, education and formal employment.

Jordan has one of the world’s lowest women’s representation in the workforce and faces significant inequalities, despite women having the right to vote and being enrolled at school at slightly higher rates than boys. Citizenship laws are complicated and disadvantage women, with citizenship rights only being passed down through men. This means that if a Jordanian woman marries a non-citizen, their children would not have access to basic rights such as education and public health care. Moreover, non-citizens need to obtain permits to live in the country as well as being barred from working in certain professions and most of the public sector (New Arab 2022). As with many countries, gender-based violence is a prevalent issue, and certain laws are particularly detrimental. Until very recently if a man rapes a woman in Jordan he can escape punishment if he marries her, and spousal rape is not considered a crime. This law was repealed in 2017, but it remains a controversial topic (Al Jazeera 2017).

Laila’s Story

For Palestinian refugees in Jordan and across the world, like Laila, the conflict in their home means existing in a state of limbo. There is a high chance that Laila may never be able to visit her homeland, but it remains an important part of her identity and history. Most Palestinian refugees are stateless, placing them in a dangerous position without legal protection or rights. Jordan is one of the exceptions to this; most Palestinian refugees have citizenship rights. According to Amnesty International, three-quarters of the more than 2 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan hold full Jordanian citizenship (Amnesty International n.d.). Whilst this provides Palestinian refugees with social protection and legal rights, they still face discrimination within Jordanian society. Thanks to Laila's Jordanian citizenship she was able to enroll in a Jordanian high school and later university. The first time she ever left the camp at 16 was to go to high school. However, being integrated into the Jordanian education system also brought about a clash of identity and discrimination. Some of Laila's teachers banned her from wearing the Palestinian flag or any other symbols, and she was made to feel ashamed of her heritage. Laila identifies this as the moment of her political awakening, in an interview with Cosmopolitan saying that her identity as a Palestinian refugee and living in the camp was frowned upon. "Some girls used to hide where they came from, but I'm not," she said. "I've been living here so what is the problem with that?" she said (Cosmopolitan 2015). The discrimination Laila faced in her life as a Palestinian refugee has enabled her to galvanize social change.

Laila’s Murals

Laila’s murals are powerful tools for advocacy, making public representations of social issues such as gender-based violence, lack of women’s representation in the workforce, and ongoing discrimination against Palestinian refugees. Her pieces are characterised by motifs of femininity, displacement and Palestine, and she strategically uses cool colours to promote a sense of calm. In a conversation with GQ Middle East, Laila talked about her reluctance to use red in her murals, which can evoke negative emotions anger, violence, and death, consciously wanting to cultivate a more peaceful tone in her pieces (Shafee 2024). Her first mural, titled “Look at my mind,” was made in Ras Al-Ain Gallery at a workshop organised by Women on Walls in 2014. The mural depicts a woman’s head cracked open, revealing a bird breaking free from its cage, waves of water, a rainbow and a lightbulb (Cosmopolitan 2015). The piece invites us to challenge the focus on women’s appearances, and instead to look at the creativity, knowledge and beauty that flows from their minds. When Laila has discussed her responsibility as an artist, she stresses the importance of her pieces being tied to the past and presence, and as being a means of protecting her Palestinian identity. Motifs relating to Palestine, and Laila’s status as a refugee are also very present in her work. She often paints children, elderly figures and women in traditional Palestinian dress, as well as includes symbols such as keys (representing the right to return), olive trees, oranges, and maps of historic Palestine. By marking the walls of her city, she makes sure that her homeland is not forgotten, a beautiful means of cultural resistance. Irbid refugee camp, where Laila was born and raised, is unofficially named Al Awda (roughly translating to return to the homeland). Whilst the history of Palestine remains strong, Laila admits in an interview with Cosmopolitan that she is scared that it is slowly being erased in schools. “We used to have national days where we celebrate, or remember, or are trying to make poetry or art gallery for Palestine [but] These activities are not being done anymore.” (Cosmopolitan 2015)

Laila Ajjawi’s murals do more than just beautify the streets. They are invitations to question how women and refugees are treated in Jordan. Through her work, she transforms public places into spaces for dialogue and reflection. Laila continues to inspire change one colourful mural at a time.

Sources:

Al Tahhan, Z. (2017). ‘Historic day’ as Jordanian parliament repeals rape law. [online] www.aljazeera.com. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/8/1/historic-day-as-jordanian-parliament-repeals-rape-law.

Amnesty International (n.d.). Seventy+ Years of Suffocation | Chapter 2: Jordan. [online] Seventy+ Years of Suffocation. Available at: https://nakba.amnesty.org/en/chapters/jordan/.

Goussous, S. (2016). Artist channels feminist, Palestinian identity through graffiti. [online] Jordan Times. Available at: https://jordantimes.com/news/local/artist-channels-feminist-palestinian-identity-through-graffiti.

Gupta, P. (2015). This Woman Is Using Graffiti to Change the Way Her Country Thinks About Girls. [online] Cosmopolitan. Available at: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a50015/this-palestinian-refugee-graffiti-artist-empowers-girls-with-street-art/.

Human Rights Watch (2010). Stateless Again. [online] Human Rights Watch. Available at: https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/02/01/stateless-again/palestinian-origin-jordanians-deprived-their-nationality.

Mauvais, L. (2022). Jordanian women’s long struggle for nationality rights. [online] https://www.newarab.com/. Available at: https://www.newarab.com/analysis/jordanian-womens-long-struggle-nationality-rights.

Shafee, M. (2024). Artist Spotlight: Laila Ajjawi. [online] The Student . Available at: https://thestudentnews.co.uk/2024/01/31/for-print-artist-spotlight-laila-ajjawi/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2025].

UNRWA (2016). Jordan | UNRWA. [online] UNRWA. Available at: https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/jordan.

UNRWA (2023). Irbid Camp. [online] UNRWA. Available at: https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/jordan/irbid-camp.

In this post Paloma highlights the arty refugee experience of Laila Ajjawi. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gift shop here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

If America claims Mark Twain as one of its greatest writers – with William Faulkner going as far as to call him “the father of American literature” – then Albania has Ismail Kadare. The writer, poet, and journalist spent decades criticizing the Communist regime in which he lived and incarnating Albanian national identity. In 1990, after years of criticism of the Albanian government and multiple bans, and in light of a possible arrest, Kadare sought political asylum in France.

Kadare was born in Gjirokastër in 1936 – a city which would go on to inspire his works. As a boy, he experienced the invasion of Albania by the Italian forces during the Second World War, and the rapid shift to a Communist regime under the rule of the Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha in the postwar era. This regime was characterized by forced collectivization, surveillance, and the erasure of any dissidence, notably through cultural censorship. This new world shaped Kadare’s work.

Gifted and precocious, Kadare began writing from a very early age. At 17, he won a poetry competition in Tirana and was granted the opportunity to study literature at the Gorky Institute in Moscow. There, he witnessed firsthand the workings and influence of a communist regime in cultural affairs and the silencing of dissident intellectuals. He was disillusioned by writings of Socialist Realism - the official doctrine that dictated that all art should glorify the myth of the Socialist regime, and serve as a tool in the building of socialism and patriarchal sentiments of the masses. Kadare vowed to write against such dogmatism and the conformism that the Communist regime demanded. To him, literature was a force for truth, as he once wrote: “Faith in literature and in the creative process brings protection. It generates antibodies that allow you to struggle against state terror.

At the time of his writing, Albania had become one of the most isolated countries in Europe, sealed off by Hoxha’s brutal Stalinist policies. Hoxha was a vehement Stalinist, and developed a strong policy of political repression by the secret police, the Sigurimi. Kadare was unable to criticize the regime directly. Instead, he used literary devices such as satire, parable, allegory, myth, and magical realism to critique the regime and explore Albania’s cultural identity. His genius lay in his ability to craft stories set in distant histories, myths, and Balkan folk tales while embedding them with sharp critiques of contemporary Albanian society. Notably, he used the Ottoman Empire as a stand-in for the present-day situation, allowing him to circumvent censorship and deliver his message to domestic and international audiences.

Kadare initially was fruitful in his literary career. One of his early works, The General of the Dead Army (1963), was an international success. It was the story of an Italian general and a priest who went to Albania to repatriate the bodies of fallen soldiers after World War II. The book was criticized domestically for flouting socialist ideals and critiquing the Communist regime. For many critics, he was an ‘agent of the West’ – possibly one of the most damning things to be accused of at the time. The international profile, however, offered him some protection, as his novel represented some national pride, even though it did not conform to Socialist Realism.

As Kadare's reputation grew, so did the scrutiny of his work. In the 1970s, his criticism of the regime became increasingly explicit. In 1975, Kadare published “The Red Pasha”. The satirical poem poked fun at the Albanian Communist bureaucracy. As a result, the poem was banned and he was denounced, nearly shot, and ultimately sent to do manual labor in the Albanian provinces. Following this incident, Kadare was subject to greater repression. Many of his works were banned or unable to be published under the regime. He was under constant surveillance by the Sigurimi. Despite this, Kadare continued to write, and even smuggled his works abroad with the French translator for publication.

In 1977, Kadare published the controversial novel The Great Winter. The novel dramatizes Albania's break with the Soviet Union in 1960. Hoxha is portrayed as a national hero for his defense of Nikita Khrushchev. For many critics, this was proof of Kadare’s collaboration with the regime, in spite of the anti-totalitarian spirit of the rest of his work. He claimed that the publishing of this novel was for pragmatic purposes: the protection that international acclaim had granted him was wearing thin, and he had to prioritize his survival under socialism to dissidence.

Both Broken April (1978) and The Palace of Dreams (1981) bypassed censors, despite being thinly veiled criticisms of totalitarianism. Broken April is a story about the blood feuds that continue to haunt Albania, and explores the ways in which political power perpetuates cycles of violence. It’s an assertion of Albanian identity in the face of Hoxha’s attempt to replace this with the ideological Stalinist figure of the “new man. Meanwhile, The Palace of Dreams is a political novel in the tradition of Orwell and Kafka, about a state-run institution that manipulates the dreams of the population in order to control their actions. The novel was banned almost immediately after its publication and Kadare was forbidden to publish book-length novels thereafter.

After The Palace of Dreams, Kadare’s situation was even more difficult. He faced greater criticism and feared the intensification of the regime that would occur when Enver Hoxha was replaced. Upon discovering that he had been marked, along with 100 other writers, for arrest, Kadare sought asylum in France in 1990, where he was granted citizenship immediately.

Kadare's move to France marked a new phase in his literary career. He was able to write more directly about the Albanian regime. Notably, he published The Blinding Order, in which he explored the psychological and social effects of absolute power, depicting an Ottoman sultan who decrees that those with the "evil eye" must be blinded. Similarly, in The Pyramid, he critiqued the construction of monumental projects as a means for oppressive rulers to reinforce their control over their subjects.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, Kadare’s international reputation continued to grow. He became one of the most celebrated authors of his generation, earning numerous prestigious awards, including the 1992 Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca and the 2005 Man Booker International Prize. In 2020, he was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In his nomination, the juror wrote that “Kadare is the successor of Franz Kafka. No one since Kafka has delved into the infernal mechanism of totalitarian power and its impact on the human soul in as much hypnotic depth as Kadare."

He was still intrinsically tied to his homeland, and once the communist regime had given way, he returned to Tirana, living between Albania and Paris. In his later works, publishing autobiographical works such as Invitation to the Writer's Studio (1990), The Weight of the Cross (1991), and The Doll (2015). These works served as reflections on his homeland and the legacy of Albania's history of political repression, as well as serve as record-setters for his actions under the regime.

Ismail Kadare’s literary legacy endures as a testament to the power of the written word against tyranny. His ability to craft stories that resonated with both the political and the human experiences, especially in a period of near-impossible everyday life under this oppressive regime, secured his place among great writers of Albania and the 20th century. Kadare’s works continue to resonate today, inspiring dissidence against repressive governments and the censorship of the truth.

Bibliography:

“Ismaíl Kadaré: Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2009.” Fundación Princesa de Asturias. https://www.fpa.es/en/princess-of-asturias-awards/laureates/2009-ismail-kadare/?texto=trayectoria&especifica=0 Accessed 25 March, 2025.

“2020 - Ismail Kadare: Winner of the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.” The Neustadt Prizes. https://www.neustadtprize.org/2020-ismail-kadare/ Accessed 25 March, 2025.

Bellos, David. “Why Should We Read Ismail Kadare?” World Literature Today, Vol. 95, No. 1, 2021, pp. 54-55.

Bellos, David. “Ismail Kadare obituary.” The Guardian, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jul/01/ismail-kadare-obituary Accessed 25 March, 2025.

Binder, David. “Albanian Exile Writer Sees Reform.” The New York Times, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/06/world/albanian-exile-writer-sees-reform.html Accessed 25 March, 2025.

Elsie, Robert. “Evolution and Revolution in Modern Albanian Literature.” World Literature Today, Vol. 65, No. 2, 1991, pp. 256-263.

Lea, Richard. “Ismail Kadare, giant of Albanian literature, dies aged 88.” The Guardian, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/01/ismail-kadare-giant-of-albanian-literature-dies-aged-88?CMP=share_btn_url Accessed 25 March, 2025.

Manguel, Alberto. “‘An ancient shadow permeates his work’: Alberto Manguel on the genius of Ismail Kadare.” The Guardian, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/01/an-ancient-shadow-permeates-his-work-alberto-manguel-on-the-genius-of-ismail-kadare Accessed 25 March, 2025.

Morgan, Peter. “Ismail Kadare: Modern Homer or Albanian Dissident?” World Literature Today, Vol. 80, No. 5, 2006, pp. 7-11.

Murray, John. “Books: The Orphan’s Voice.” Independent, 1998. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books-the-orphan-s-voice-1140904.html Accessed 25 March, 2025.

Zerofsky, Elisabeth. “Ismail Kadare Attributes His Writer’s Gift to His Mother.” The New York Times, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/books/review/ismail-kadare-doll.html Accessed 25 March, 2025.

In this post Margaux highlights the arty refugee experience of Ismail Kadare She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gift shop here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

Shirin Neshat is not only a critically acclaimed artist, but she is also a brave activist whose emotive photography criticising Iran’s oppression of women resulted in her being exiled.

Shirin Neshat was born in Iran in 1957 and moved to the USA in 1975 for university. However, in 1979 the Iranian Islamic Revolution occurred, stripping women of their rights. For example, by 1983 women were required by law to wear the veil covering their face known as the Chador. As a result, Shirin Neshat started making reactionary artwork, including her famous piece “Rebellious Silence” which depicts a hijabi woman glaring defiantly at the viewer with a gun barrel between her eyes. Written on the woman’s face is the feminist poem Allegiance with Wakefulness by Tahereh Saffarzadeh which references women being forced to wear the veil. Speaking to the Guardian, Neshat elaborated on the significance of the poem saying, “the written text is the voice of the photograph,”- “It breaks the silence of the still woman.”

Her work has continued to feature themes of tyranny, oppression and women’s lack of ownership over their own bodies. However, as a result of Iran’s conservative government which censors politically rebellious artwork, her work has never been shown in Iran. Additionally, it was unsafe for Neshat to return to Iran, and she was exiled for 11 years, separated from her family.

She has received much critical acclaim, having been named “Artist of the Decade” by the Huffington Post’s G Roger Denson in 2010. Aside from her artwork, she has also been heavily involved in other forms of activism, having arranged a hunger strike to free political prisoners held in Iran. One of these was Jafar Panahi, another Iranian director who was successfully freed.

With the 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini in Iran for not wearing a hijab “properly” shocking the world, the Iranian society’s oppression of women continues to be a prevalent issue. This means that Shirin Neshat’s artwork continues to remain extremely relevant.

References

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/oct/10/veils-banned-iran-mahsa-amini-shirin-neshat-rebellious-silence

https://nmwa.org/art/artists/shirin-neshat/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2019/nov/25/yoko-ono-and-the-amnesty-art-sale-in-pictures

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jun/13/shirin-neshat-women-without-men

In this post Hanna highlights the arty refugee experience of Shirin Neshat. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gift shop here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.

Click here to play & learn.

Back Story

What do you believe people would need in post conflict communities? Food? Water? Housing? Security? Knowledge of the state of their loved ones? These are all of course necessities for communities in any state, but especially in post conflict communities, these are even more so necessary. However, one constant necessity that is often overlooked in communities in all three states: before, during and after, is the cultural heritage. Cultural heritage can manifest itself in many different ways: music, art, cooking, dancing, singing, farming and agriculture, clothing etc. There is an indefinite list. It is the cultural heritage of these communities that changes their status in a post conflict environment from ‘surviving’ to ‘living and wanting to thrive’. It is in this way that the forms of ‘Cultural Heritage ’embodies and showcases the resilience and perseverance of a people.

You can see this in many instances. For example, during Pro-Palestinian protests there are many people who dance the ‘dabke’ (a traditional Palestinian dance, which is shared, with slight differences, with the other Levant countries), or wear the black and white Keffiyeh which has become a symbol of resistance in the past 80 years; nurturing and bringing back to life the very earth one steps on with agricultural (farming) methods passed down through generations etc. One notable Iraqi artist named Layla Al- Attar (1942-1993) portrayed her resistance through her art; she created a mosaic portrait of George H. W. Bush on the floor of the main entrance of Al Rasheed Hotel with the phrase “Bush is Criminal“ written beneath it (which allowed people to step on his face when they walked in and out the entrance). She continued to create her art and never strayed from politics, with her main focus being the importance of women in all spheres of society.

Having developed an understanding of cultural heritage, we will now look at the main subject of this article: Naseer Shamma. Born in 1963, Kut, a city in the south of Iraq on the Tigris river, Naseer Shamma as a young boy developed a love for the Oud. The Oud (you might also know it by the name: Lute) is a stringed instrument, known as the grandfather of all stringed instruments, because the Oud is an ancient instrument with ancient musical traditions dating more than 4,000 years to Mesopotamia. The Oud ended up being introduced to new countries and continents, of which all ended up developing their own version of it; we also know that the Oud was introduced to Andalusia (modern day Spain) by Ziryab, who was an Iraqi singer and musician from Mosul (a city in Iraq) in the 9th century AC. Later on in life Naseer Shamma would be given the title “Little Ziryab,” from France, and the title of Messenger of Arab Culture to the West from Germany. In his replies to questions from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Naseer states that he also sees himself as a student of Ziryab, stating:

‘’During Ziryab’s time, he was transferring our rich civilization from the East to the West. He was a messenger who wandered and left his disciples everywhere. I am also, in a way, one of his students, and my work on the oud is also globalizing.’’

However, the journey to gain these titles was a turbulent one, and Naseer remained steadfast in his wish to preserve the ancient musical tradition of the Oud. As a young man, he went on to graduate from the Institute of Musical Studies in Baghdad, as well as earning a Ph.D. in Musical Philosophy, with his research focus being on musical stylistics, which was not a common study in Arab libraries. Explaining his research focus to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Naseer states: ‘’My research deals with Chopin’s influences on music and writing for the piano, and also includes stylistic theory and how it applies to music and to Arab and European composers.’’

Naseer approached the Oud as an individual, whilst following in the footsteps of those who came before him with respect, he also found his own path with the Oud, and his many contributions will become evident of this.

Firstly we must look at his life in Iraq and his eventual need to leave the country. Iraq in the 1980s to 2000s was not a very stable country, from problems arising both internally and externally. Now under the Saddam Hussein regime, Naseer Shamma was arrested under the claim that he had insulted the regime, however, there was no fair trial and not much to the case yet he was sentenced to be executed without court hearing, after a few weeks of interrogating. He spent several weeks in prison before they just let him go without any due processing. Naseer remained in Iraq even after this, but it was during the 1990s when the USA was creating great devastation in Iraq, that someone alerted Naseer that another imprisonment was imminent which led him to flee Iraq into exile.

Despite his flee from his beloved country, he remained carrying that country around with him in the form of his Oud. He became a teacher and kept the tradition alive by teaching others. Eventually Naseer Shamma went on to create multiple music schools across the Middle East called Beit al-Oud al-Arabi or The Arab Oud House; with many people globally seeking him out as a teacher due to his unique style when playing the Oud.

Truly as a knight wields his sword, Naseer wields his Oud. He not only protects this musical tradition but also defends and fights for his people. Wielding a huge humanitarian ethos, he donates concert proceeds to pay for medical care and schooling for refugees and lobbies Arab governments to offer aid. Notably in 2008 he raised 24,000 USD for UNHCR's (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) Iraqi refugee programme with a concert in Damascus.

Naseer now holds the titles of Ambassador of Nonviolence International, Red Cross, Red Crescent and UNESCO Peace Artist. Even in exile he does not stop providing for his community and his people, continuously waiting for a day where his nation is truly free and healed. These feelings of hope but despair, longing but pain, a life of exile is very evident in his music, with Naseer commenting:

"You know it's more deep, my music, and more strong now, because always there is pain everywhere ... and in my heart. And, of course, all that is very clear in my music,"

His music is not a form of escapism, rather a resilient and steadfast approach to reality. Both the reality that he lived and the reality that many Iraqis are living.

One of the most amazing things that Naseer has done, that truly cemented him as an Oud master who deserves the respect of many, is the development of a way to play the Oud with one hand. From a friend who emerged from the Iraq-Iran war with only one hand, to a vast majority of adults and children alike who lost hands and fingers during conflicts or as punishments; Naseer Shamma made what seemed impossible, possible (keeping his promise to his friend):

"I stayed in my house for months without giving any concerts," ,"Every day I practiced, practiced, practiced. At the end of a month, I thought, 'This is impossible.' But in the end I did it. ... I kept my promise."

At the end of the day, what has always stuck with humanity for centuries, is an appreciation for the arts. It is what sets us aside from other animals. And it is this appreciation that will keep us going and remind us not to abandon our humanity. Naseer Shamma shows us how we can be a community that heals together through preserving culture.

Bibliography

• Carmona, L. (n.d.). Ziryab, the amazing story of the singer from Baghdad. [online] El legado andalusi. Available at: https://www.legadoandalusi.es/magazine/ziryab-the-amazing-story-of-the-singer-from-baghdad-2/?lang=en.

• Ibrahimicollection.com. (2025). Layla AL-ATTAR (1944 – 1993) | Ibrahimi Collection. [online] Available at: http://www.ibrahimicollection.com/node/114 [Accessed 28 Mar. 2025].

• Kandel, D. (2022). The Empowering Legacy of Iraqi Artist Layla Al-Attar. [online] Arts Help. Available at: https://www.artshelp.com/layla-al-attar/.

• KEYSER, J. (2008). Composer uses music to help Iraqis in need. [online] Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Available at: https://eu.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2008/09/15/composer-uses-music-to-help-iraqis-in-need/28661437007/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2025].

• Murphy, M.C. (2010). Naseer Shamma and the music of resistance. [online] The Electronic Intifada. Available at: https://electronicintifada.net/content/naseer-shamma-and-music-resistance/8662.

• Naseer Shamma. (n.d.). Bio. [online] Available at: https://www.shammamusic.com/bio.

• Sbeity, L. (2024). Naseer Shamma: The oud is a mirror that reflects the player’s emotions. [online] Al Majalla. Available at: https://en.majalla.com/node/320016/culture-social-affairs/naseer-shamma-oud-mirror-reflects-players-emotions.

• Thomas, M. (2015). Oud master Naseer Shamma builds global harmony through music | Chicago Symphony Orchestra. [online] Experience the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Available at: https://cso.org/experience/article/12152/oud-master-naseer-shamma-builds-global-harmon.

• Wilkes, S. (2023). World Refugee Day: Iraqi musician raises USD 24,000 for UNHCR programmes | UNHCR UK. [online] UNHCR UK. Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/world-refugee-day-iraqi-musician-raises-usd-24-000-unhcr-programmes [Accessed 28 Mar. 2025].

In this post Raffah highlights the arty refugee experience of Nasser Shamma. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.

Thank you for reading an A4R 🎨 Post. Don’t forget to visit our gift shop here. Every purchase scales our impact and pays our bills.