»But that's how it is, the exile syndrome: I can't get up and I can't drown«.

Abdalrahman Alqalaq's poems and stories describe a war, an escape and arriving in another world. They trace the old homeland, the distance that has piled up between the self and this place, they deal with the new home and remember old friends.

Abdalrahman Alqalaq was born in 1997 in al-Yarmouk, a district of Damascus that was established in 1948 after the Nakba as a camp for displaced Palestinian families. The war in Syria forced him to flee. At the end of July 2024, he published his first volume of poetry in German, »Übergangsritus«, with Wallstein-Verlag.

Together with the Verein arabischer Kunst und Kultur e. V., we will be talking to the Palestinian poet, author and performer, accompanied by music and tea from the samovar.