While the Earth Sleeps We Travel: Stories, Poetry, and Art from Young Refugees Around the World

Description

In 2018, Badr traveled to Greece, where he spent months holding storytelling workshops with displaced people in camps, squats, and elsewhere around the city of Athens. Combining Badr's own poetry and photographs with the creative contributions of hundreds of refugees, While the Earth Sleeps We Travel seeks to tell a story that often goes unheard, in the voices of those who are living it.

Ahmed Badr is a 20-year-old writer, social entrepreneur, poet, and former Iraqi refugee working at the intersection of creativity, displacement, and youth empowerment. On July 25, 2006, Ahmed's home in Baghdad was bombed by militia troops. He and his family relocated to Syria as refugees for two-and-a-half years before receiving approval to move to the United States. Badr founded Narratio, a platform for youth empowerment through creative expression. Narratio publishes works of art from all over the globe, and hosts workshops centered on the power of storytelling and creativity. Currently a Junior at Wesleyan University, Badr is a Fellow at the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life.

"This book is an extraordinary showcase of international creativity-the power of the expressions featured transcends any borders or tragedies and serves as a vital reminder that displaced young people must be allowed to claim their place on the world's biggest stages. Ahmed Badr recognizes the inextricable relationship between agency and storytelling and is on the forefront of helping others do the same. By thoughtfully and delicately highlighting the unrestrained creative potential of resilient young people, this book invites a more critical engagement with the differences we assume about one another, and the distances we can bridge by sharing our own stories." (Benj Pasek, Tony Award-Winning composer of Dear Evan Hansen) "One of Ahmed's poems explores why he survived the bomb that destroyed his childhood home. It says, 'tragedies always end with a period, but yours ended with a semicolon.' This book is what comes after the semicolon. The chorus of voices of young people from places as diverse as Venezuela, Somalia, Syria, and Bangladesh, will reaffirm your faith in human resilience and challenge your assumptions about what it means to be a refugee." (Ari Shapiro, Host, NPR's All Things Considered) "These are precious stories, which have been carefully collected and sensitively told. Badr exposes the richness, diversity, and sheer beauty of the inner worlds of young people who have experienced displacement." (Hassan Damluji, Deputy Director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and author of The Responsible Globalist) "Ahmed shows that the creative spirit of a person forced to flee or compelled to migrate cannot be squelched by bombs, confinement, or fear. In giving young uprooted people this platform to express their singular experience through words and art, he also connects them and himself to all of humanity. With his own stirring poems and art woven through, it is clear his own refugee childhood gave him the impetus to become the remarkable artist he is, but also to inspire the incredible talent of the voices reflected in the work on each and every page of this treasure of a book." (Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, United Nations) "While the Earth Sleeps We Travel is a moving compilation of stories of refugees who each have a powerful story to tell but also have much in common. What makes this book so much more powerful is that rather than describe them, Ahmed Badr gives these refugees a chance to tell their own story in their own way . . . As the world continues to grapple with the highest number of refugees and internally displaced people on record, this book converts statistics into names and individual stories that should and do matter. It will leave you feeling sadness at the suffering millions endure, but also filled with hope in learning about these exceptional individuals." (Mina Al-Oraibi, Iraqi journalist and editor in chief of The National Newspaper) "This collection of life-affirming artistic expressions from youth around the world is a testament to the power of storytelling and the many beautiful contradictions that the liminal spaces of identity politics can often embody. In his role as both witness and facilitator, Ahmed Badr has done a brilliant job of weaving his own poignant reflections throughout this book, while uplifting the voices of his peers in a generous and thoughtful way. As an immigrant from Syria who began my own poetic journey during my teenage years, I am in awe of these young people who are facing such profound challenges with levels of eloquence, vision and resolve that usually take a lifetime to muster." (Omar Offendum, Syrian-American poet and rapper) "Ahmed Badr's personal experience has thrust upon him a sense of social responsibility found in persons far in advance of his age. This collection forms a mosaic of talents from various backgrounds including some groundbreaking poetry and art by teenagers and young adults whose talents have been dismissed and neglected for far too long." (Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, Founder, Barjeel Art Foundation)