All right.
So I've been working on a sequence of poems
on human trafficking that's been happening in North Africa,
in my native Libya.
And I've been researching it and how much in many ways
it's economic, it's ambition, it's drought, it's poverty,
and it's global economics all together.
And it's also made the world into really a sequence
of holding pens.
A great book that I'm--
read is called Illegality, Inc, and in that book
essentially, Europe's borders have become Africa really.
The Spanish-- the Spanish guards, Guardia Civil,
the ones that kill the local, are operating in Africa.
They have their centers there.
And they have something called Frontex,
which is the front of Europe.
The headquarters of Frontex is in Warsaw.
They are the ones who made a deal with Turkey to make
the migrants stay in Turkey.
Some of you may have heard NPR today about Moria,
the camp in Lesbos.
So that's what I've been thinking about.
And myself as an immigrant, a refugee at some point,
and the grandchild of refugees-- my family
fled Libya when the Italians invaded in the '20s.
And they walked all the-- they walked all the way to Egypt.
And they were stopped on the borders
where the League of Nations before the UN
had to make them some papers.
And so it's a--
I don't know how we would have--
I mean, our relatives survived.
We didn't flee, but it's just part
of my life and my grandparents.
And my father was born on the trip.
And the woman my grandmother ended--
or grandfather ended up marrying after my grandmother died
had her first wedding on this trip.
So these journeys really do take a lifetime.
I think it took them about a year and a half to walk.
They had to prepare, they have to make sure
that there's water.
And so the people that are going to Europe
from "deepest Africa," if you will,
it takes them years to get on that boat,
whether it's from Libya to Lampedusa,
or it used to be from Senegal to Cape Verde or from Turkey
to Lesbos.
Here, people from Afghanistan have
to go south to Baluchistan, up all the way Iran,
across Eastern Turkey, so years and years of work.
So as much as I feel like that story is part of my story,
I also feel like there is a story that I am hesitant about.
Part of it is--
but I mean, it's not emboldened, but I engage in this because,
yes, there's some alternate who does not speak.
People who do not have power, one of their sources
are a lack-- so their power is their ability not to express
or talk about their lives.
And also because something like this--
this is articulated by Fernando Pessoa.
He says, "I do not know who I am, what soul I have.
When I speak with sincerity, I do not
know what sincerity I am speaking with.
Unvaryingly, someone other than I over whom I do not
know if he exists, if he is those others."
So in this regard, this suite of poems
is multivocal, a number of voices speaking.
There are maybe four characters that come in and out.
One is Malouk.
And he's not based, but evolved as a character based on a novel
called African Titanics by an author
from Eritrea named Abu Bakr Khaal.
And Amadou is somebody I knew in Libya.
And Constance and Blessing are women whose stories
I've learned about through interviews
and through research.
"Psalm."
So this is the Lampedusa--
Lampedusa is a tiny island.
It's actually in Africa.
It's the nearest point for migrants
who come through Western Libya to try to go to Italy.
So once they reach Lampedusa, then they're in Italy.
And they're then taken in by European migrants and so on--
European migration.
And then they'll may be considered refugees and so on.
And Agadez, Agadez is a town in central Niger,
where people are now congregating from all parts
of Africa, from Congo, from--
although sometimes they come from Senegal
all the way to Niger, which is thousands of miles,
or they come from Eritrea and there,
and then that's the second stop.
And sometimes people spend a year
in Agadez waiting to have enough money in order to make it.
And the traffickers are really--
their transporters, but they're also kidnappers.
Once you agree for them to take you, then you are--
you're in their hands.
They can ask for money, and they can ask for more money.
And they put you up in a camp.
It's a condition that no one will want to live in.
So I'll read from them, and maybe I'll
close with something else.