Fleeing the censors: The life and poetry of Syrian-Palestinian writer Ghayath Almadhoun

Published in October 2023, the poem I Have Brought You Syria contains recurrent themes found in Ghayath Almadhoun's body of work.
That includes the effects war and love, as well as meditations on the eternal search for home, all strewn with specks of dark humour.
Its opening lines read:
I have brought you a rose of concrete that resembles my days that have passed,
And dreams stripped of nightmares, so you don’t get infected with memories,
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And whenever I am lost in translation, I peel the metaphor like an orange for you,
And hide my poems that suffer from postmodern stress disorder.
At 45, Almadhoun now has five poetry collections to his name and his poems have been translated into 30 languages, including books published in 13.
His poetic short film Evian, one of seven in total, won the Zebra Award for Best Poetry Film in 2020.
Born in 1979 in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, Almadhoun's interest in poetry runs deep.
“There is a section in the Quran, it’s called the 'poets' (ash-Shu'ara). Towards the end it says ‘Don’t you see that they are travelling everywhere’. I was fascinated by this in my childhood, I said to myself: I will be a poet," he tells Middle East Eye.
Almadhoun published his first poem in a Syrian literary magazine in 1999, aged 19. His first book followed in 2004, with another in 2008, both winning literary prizes in Syria.
But that success came tinged with the fear that comes coupled with free expression in an authoritarian state. Under former President Bashar al-Assad, dissidents risked torture and imprisonment for falling on the wrong side of the government.
Poetry initially provided a way to skirt around the state's restrictions but eventually the censors caught up.
"The Syrian dictatorship was a very classic one," Almadhoun explains. "They don’t care about poetry and poets because they don’t respect them. In poetry you could say a lot, they didn’t give a shit."
But when the government started arresting friends, the young poet decided to flee.
In 2008, Almadhoun managed to escape to Sweden following an invitation to a Stockholm literature festival.
He applied for political asylum and eventually acquired Swedish citizenship. Until late 2024 and the collapse of the Assad dynasty, Almadhoun could not return to his homeland.
"I could meet my mother in Beirut once a year, she had a Syrian passport. But my dad doesn't. I have not seen my dad for 16 years. I can see him again now," he says.
In December 2024, the poet returned to Syria after 16 years of exile.
When Almadhoun returned to Daraa, the town where the Syrian revolution began in 2011 and where his parents now live, there was one family member missing.
In April 2016, Ghayath's elder brother was killed in a bombing. However, due to fear of persecution, his father did not announce his son's passing until more than eight years later.
"People knew that my brother had died but we couldn't hold a funeral, or announce his death, due to fear," he says.
"When people asked about him, we would say it was a car or motorcycle accident."
Compass of fear
Almadhoun writes and publishes his poetry based on what he calls “a compass of fear”, a reference to the unspoken red lines an artist navigates in a dictatorship.
People living in authoritarian contexts, he says, develop a compass based on the knowledge of what can or cannot not be said.
“You knew the things you were not allowed to speak about, because you knew the direction of the power.”
'Assad was controlling Syria, and the fear of antisemitism is controlling Germany, metaphorically speaking'
- Ghayath Almadhoun, poet
Expressing criticism of Assad's Baath party would carry no consequences, Almadhoun realised, but mentioning Assad’s family could easily be enough for someone to be "disappeared", along with other family members.
"You could smell the fear everywhere. But under the Syrian regime, you could hide the real meaning behind your words with metaphors. Metaphors would save you," Almadhoun explains.
"In a democracy, using these tools doesn't work, because people don’t understand these metaphors. People can generally say what they want,” he continues.
When Almadhoun arrived in the West, after almost three decades spent in a dictatorship, his compass was working very well, he says.
But Europe was not free of its own red lines, particularly with regard to the Palestinian question in Germany, where he has lived for the past six years.
"In Syria, it was Assad, who people were afraid of; in the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin, in Romania, Ceausescu; in Libya, Gaddafi; in Iraq, Saddam Hussein. I very quickly understood that in Germany, the fear is coming from Israel."
In Germany, people are afraid of losing their jobs with accusations of antisemitism because of their criticism of Israel, Almadhoun observes.
“Assad was controlling Syria, and the fear of antisemitism is controlling Germany, metaphorically speaking.”
As an example, the poet points to last year’s Berlinale controversy, where the documentary No Other Land, which was co-directed by Israeli and Palestinian film-makers, earned the best documentary award.
Co-director Yuval Abraham used the acceptance speech to condemn the "apartheid-like situation" in the occupied West Bank.
Initially applauding the speech, the government commissioner for culture and media, Claudia Roth, later clarified shortly after the closing ceremony that her clapping was strictly directed towards Abraham, the Israeli filmmaker, and not his Palestinian colleague, Basel Adra.
“All over the world, it was a scandal that she only clapped for one of them. In Germany, they called it a scandal too, but what they mean was that it was a scandal that she clapped after this speech in the first place."
First cancelled artist in Germany
In 2019, as part of the prestigious DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme, Almadhoun came to the German capital, where he has established himself within the city's literary scene.
In 2022, Almadhoun began working on an anthology, a poetry collection titled Continental Drift - The Arabic Europe, featuring poems by 31 exiled Arab poets from Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen who now live in European capitals.
The book was to be published together with the Berlin-based literary foundation Haus fur Poesie (House for Poetry).
'Censorship is something you expect from a dictatorship. But when somebody cancels you here, in a democracy, it's like entering totalitarianism again'
- Ghayath Almadhoun
However, after a change of leadership at the foundation in 2023, several poems, as well as the works of three poets, were removed entirely.
The new leadership demanded that each contributing poet for the anthology sign a document stating that they did not support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Ghayath decided to confront the foundation over the stipulations.
“You are doing this because I am an Arab and Muslim. This is discrimination," he recalls telling the directors.
"Secondly, BDS is a movement. If you want to add it to the contract, you can, but you need to add every forbidden movement in Germany," he added.
The directors decided to add a clause that Haus fur Poesie is “against all forms of discrimination, including sexism, racism, antisemitism”. The clause did not include Islamophobia.
Eventually published in September 2023, a launch event for the collection at Haus fur Poesie was scheduled for 11 December that year.
On 5 October, Almadhoun received an email from the directors of the event, informing him that they were pleased that several contributing poets had agreed to take part in the launch event and that they expected Almadhoun, as the main editor, to also be present on stage to talk about the book.
The email stated that they would inform him about the exact schedule closer to the date.
Two days later, the Hamas-led fighters launched an offensive into southern Israel, leading to the deaths of more than a thousand Israelis.

On 12 October, Almadhoun received an email from the directors informing him that the final quarter budget audit had just taken place and that the organisation had run into some "end of year-issues".
"We will need to cancel several performances with higher costs planned for November and December. So unfortunately, the presentation of (The Arabic Europe) also cannot take place as planned," the email said.
“This turned me into the first cancelled artist in Germany after 7 October. A day later, it was Adania Shibli, and now we are 205 public, and hundreds in secret," Ghayath tells Middle East Eye.
In October 2023, Germany’s largest book fair, the Frankfurt Book Fair, cancelled the planned award ceremony of Palestinian author Adania Shibli, for her novel Minor Detail, which is set in the aftermath of the Nakba in 1948.
The registry of cancelled artists and intellectuals in Germany after 7 October is documented on the online platform Archive of Silence.
Many artists choose not to go public with their cases for fear of being labelled antisemitic or losing their jobs and careers, Almadhoun tells Middle East Eye.
“Censorship is something you expect from a dictatorship. But when somebody cancels you here, in a democracy, it's like entering totalitarianism again."
Ghayath's most recent book, I Have Brought You a Severed Hand, which was completed one month before 7 October 2023, will be published in Germany, the US, UK and Belgium in February.
However, since the war on Gaza started, Ghayath has stopped writing.
"I am totally messed up. This situation is unbearable, I am in an existential crisis."
Ghayath Almadhoun's 'I Have Brought You a Severed Hand' will be published in English in February 2025 by Action Books in the US, and in March 2025 by Divided Publishing in London and Brussels.
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