photo courtesy UNPACKED

When the War Came to Homs,
Home in Syria, 2011

How we left that day,
bed unmade,
coffee in its cup
on the table.

I see it still, steaming
in the delicate porcelain,
dark and bitter and bracing.

Maybe surrounded
by ash now,
rebar bits,
splintery glittering shards,
chunks
of fallen cement
and plaster
from the blast.

Interrupted
from its morning
ritual of comfort,
probably shattered,
spilled out,
gone.

-Laura Altshul [1941–2024]

UNPACKED: Refugee Baggage seeks to humanize the word “refugee,” as described on its website. The multi-media installation is the work of Syrian-born, New Haven artist and architect Mohamad Hafez and Iraqi-born writer and speaker Ahmed Badr.

Hafez sculpturally re-creates rooms, homes, buildings and landscapes that have suffered the ravages of war. Each is embedded with the voices and stories of real people – from Afghanistan, Congo, Syria, Iraq and Sudan – who have escaped those same rooms and buildings to build a new life in America. Their stories are collected and curated by Badr, an Iraqi refugee who attends Wesleyan University. Short audio clips are played through headphones. Some of this can also be found on the project website.

In September 2017, I experienced the powerful, wrenching, heart-breaking art installation in New Haven (thanks to a partnership between IRIS and Artspace). I was deeply moved by the poignant stories of refugees fleeing their homes and countries. The images and stories were haunting; ever since, I have been thinking of how painful it must be for a person to leave everything behind at a moment’s notice, and realize that one can never return to the comfort of home. In my own soul-searching and reflection, I was especially struck with the image of the coffee set out on the table in the midst of horrible destruction; it gave rise to the poem above (which can also be found in the Connecticut River Review 2018, published by the Connecticut Poetry Society).

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