Louis Yako

Louis Yako, Ph.D., is an Iraqi American anthropologist, writer, and poet who writes in Arabic and English.

They say that the world will end soon

They say the nuclear weapons forged out of fear of the Other
have become a curse, a plague, a torment
upon those who made them—
even more than upon the ones they feared.

And I wonder:
will it be nuclear weapons that end the world,
or will it end because of fear, submission,
and the humiliation of human beings?

And if what they say is true,
then before the world ends,
and before I die,
I wish to drink one last cup
of cardamom‑flavored tea,
to taste a fig, or a peach, or an apricot,
to breathe in the fragrance of quince,
to dip a piece of bread
into Palestinian olive oil and za’atar.

Before the world ends,
I wish to inhale the sharp scent of pine needles,
the smell of the first winter rain
touching the earth
after a long, harsh, thirsty summer.

Before the world ends,
and before I die,
I want to read at least one book
from among the thousands
I still dream of reading.

Before the world ends,
and before I die,
I want at least one more spring
to breathe the scent of Iraqi narcissus,
and at least one more autumn
to watch the blazing colors of leaves
defying death with beauty
until the final moment
before they fall
onto the indifferent ground.

But my greatest wish,
before I die,
is this:
that my death
not be the end of the world.

October 13, 2022

Beware of strangers

They taught us when we were young,
to beware of strangers,
to avoid speaking with them.


And we grew up and learned
that no one is more of a stranger
than those we believed
were familiar to us all our lives.

We learned that the compassion
of a passing stranger
can be far greater,
and their understanding
far deeper.

Even fleeting moments of love
with strangers
can be far more honest.

And I wonder:
is it true that estrangement
and humanity
are synonyms?

Is it true that:
we are strangers,
therefore we exist?

Can we truly be alive
without strange things,
strange events,
strange people
who remind us
that the heart and mind
still pulse?

They taught us to avoid strangers,
and life taught us
that only the dagger of estrangement
awakens consciousness —
that life has no flavor
without mingling with strangers,
and that the familiar
is the opposite of life.

And here I am, shouting
with all my voice:
I was born a stranger,
and a stranger
I wish to remain.

And I ask you to issue
my death certificate
the day I become familiar.

October 29, 2022

Wristwatches

I opened the drawer of my desk,
the one where I keep old things,
and suddenly before my eyes
leapt wristwatches
whose batteries had died,
whose time had frozen still.

Watches once gifted to me
by teachers and friends
at different moments in my life —
tokens of praise for my diligence,
for my respect for time.
None of us imagined then
that time would one day stop for me,
that it would die of a heart attack,
and cease to matter at all
on the day my country was occupied and destroyed —
the day invaders from outside,
with the help of thieves from within,
burned or uprooted
everything beautiful in it.

Since that day,
I have refused to wear a wristwatch,
and I will not wear one again
until my people reclaim
their time and their dignity.

And when that day comes,
there will be no need for watches anyway.
Time itself will lose its meaning,
for I will have turned into a butterfly,
into a bird,
into a narcissus flower or an orange blossom —
or perhaps I will become
a white bloom on an apricot branch,
a spring that flows endlessly,
needing neither time nor timing.

In that same drawer of old things
I found pens whose ink had run dry,
lying there like mummified bodies,
just like the frozen time
inside those dead watches.

And in a moment of despair,
a feeling struck me like lightning,
leaving behind a terrible, trembling question:

What if this is a wound
that no amount of time can heal,
and a cause
that all the ink in the world
cannot resolve?

February 5, 2023

Half-dead Tree

In my village, there once stood a tree—
half of it dead,
and the other half blooming and leafing out each year.

And every time I walked past it,
my heart split in two:
one half rejoicing in its living side,
the other aching
for the half that had died.

The years went by…
and that ancient tree remained unchanged—
its living half never withered,
and life never returned
to its dead half.

Then one bright spring morning,
as I stood gazing at it,
I finally understood what the elders of my village meant
when, at the arrival of any calamity or grief,
they would say:
“Half of me is gone.”

And I wondered then
whether their philosophy—
born from the womb of nature itself—
was deeper than Nietzsche’s claim
that what does not kill us makes us stronger.

For I understood, in that moment,
that what does not kill us
kills half of us—
and leaves us like the tree of my village:
one half gone,
and the other half living on
only to mourn it
for the rest of our days.

February 21, 2023

A taxi driver

There is a strange kind of freedom
in being nothing more than a taxi driver.
The whole secret lies in that phrase: nothing more.

Everyone leaves you alone,
because you are just a taxi driver — nothing more.
No one truly sees you,
while you, in turn, see and hear and feel
the nonsense, the pettiness, the beauty, the sorrow,
the joy and the tight‑throated ache
of every passenger who steps inside.

Most people treat you with a respect
that is half‑real,
or entirely false —
because you are just a driver, nothing more.
But they leave you be;
they don’t invent excuses or crises
to seize your seat or your steering wheel.

And you discover a strange freedom
in a world where no one wants your place —
where they really want you
to sit in that very seat.
After all, they ride with you
because they themselves are not willing
(at least not at that moment)
to sit where you sit.

But like every freedom,
it is mixed with bitterness and a sting —
when you realize that the sons of bitches
leave you alone only when you’ve escaped them
and settled into a seat
they do not want at that moment,
a seat that, in their eyes,
is the seat of a taxi driver — nothing more.

June 21, 2023

Denial

 
We persist in our denial, again and again…
We persist far too much,
until we become like that bad, obscure writer
who imagined that the whole world hated him and was plotting against him.
And our poor writer kept on denying,
even as he lay on his deathbed,
where he firmly instructed his wife
that he would never forgive the world
and would not receive a single visitor until he died.
As for his poor wife,
she would knock on the door from time to time,
out of pity and compassion for his condition,
then return to tell him that visitors had come to check on him—
but that she had turned them away, just as he had instructed.

June 7, 2026