Adnan al-Sayegh was born in Al-Kufa, Iraq, in 1955. Today he is a renowned international award-winning poet.

At the age of 25, Adnan was forcibly conscripted into the Iraq army. Resistance meant execution. As a result, he faced injury and death on the battlefields of the 1980-1989 Iraq-Iran war. During this cataclysmic conflict, Adnan was detained for reading books forbidden by the Iraqi autocratic authorities. Along with other prisoners, he was confined in an abandoned stable, situated on the Iran-Iraq borders. This encampment was surrounded by hidden land mines and in danger of...