Unknown Destiny

Refreshingly honest poems by a former refugee who returned home to a world turned upside down by war.

Having lived through the horrors of war and displacement, Razi helps readers find their way. Razi has a rare gift of noticing what others don’t see.

Presented in Arabic with an English translation.

“Kills the pain that dances in my soul.”
– M. Albilal, literature student, Netherlands.

“This book is a gift to anyone who thinks they are alone, as Razi melds connections between pain and beauty in ‘a cave of great sadness and extreme, unimaginable love’”
– P. Y., psychologist and trauma specialist, USA.

“There is something intensely intimate in Razi’s plaintive lamentation: a woundedness one only allows a close friend to hear.”
– J. K., lover of poetry.

Razi Al Kouta, who lives in the city of his birth in an Arabic-speaking country, is gifted with vision and compassion. His poetic vision is hopeful in spite of life’s harshness: Years of war in his city, with bombs, fighting and death everywhere, loneliness as a refugee in the West, and an overwhelming depression. Through mental health treatment and the support of family and friends, Al Kouta was able to return home. Over time, he has gradually joined with others to offer compassionate care for the most vulnerable of God’s creatures. He writes: ‘No one can make a complete change or bring about complete justice without others. But if others don’t believe in the change, it will collapse, even though it is small. Pain is expanding like a storm – like a hurricane. Who cares?’