"War and its reverberations propel people across the Nigerian landscape in Hussain Ahmed's third collection"--
Tracing the threads of migration that war so often catalyzes, Crossroad Mirror takes us from grassland to cornfield to coastline and explores the role storytelling and spirituality play in leaving and grieving.
War and its reverberations propel people across the Nigerian landscape in Hussain Ahmeds third collection
In Crossroad Mirror many poems begin after sundownin quiet moments when the bounds between the past and the present, the living and the dead, blur. War and its aftershocks often form the backdrop for these scenes, though Ahmeds verse rarely brings us to the battlefield itself. Instead, we hear the stories of refugees, civilian casualties, and ordinary soldiers trying to make sense of their circumstances. Theres no vocabulary in the armyfor grief, or death, writes Ahmed. Each door you exit, leads to another parade ground. A group of soldiers wait out a rainstormand the wartogether in a tent. Their families linger by the radio and listen for news. The missing loom as large as the dead.
Tracing the threads of migration that war so often catalyzes, Crossroad Mirror takes us from grassland to cornfield to coastline and explores the role storytelling and spirituality play in leaving and grieving.
