Losing hope means ceasing to love my son and my girlfriend and many friends and people around the world.

I've been working on the margins and I was aware of this choice from the start. I buy most of what's written and produced in the Arab world and I don't much like it.

One of the Baathists once told me, "If you're not careful, I'll have you put away," and those words meant death.

In fact I didn't think about fear much at the time. I felt angry about everything that was happening around me: the violence of the dictatorship and the violence of society.

The trail of "secret migration" was a shock to me. I knew a little about the difficulties, just bits of news in the media.

I still write in literary Arabic but I try to rid it of the rhetoric, the symbolism, and the stuff that ordinary people don't understand.

I'm talking about the essence of humanity. Hope is mixed into the blood of every human being, everywhere and in every time.