By Dr. Adnan Bozan

If you find no place for yourself among faces you grew up knowing as a child, which then became blind mirrors seeing only a stranger timidly knocking on doors, then rise... and migrate.

Migrate, even if the dawn weeps on the edge of your pillow every morning. Even if you leave behind sidewalks where you wrote your first poems, mulberry trees that kept your name, and an old woman who placed bread for you on the window.

Migrate, and if your steps betray you when you are about to leave, know that it is merely the last tremor of a foot stuck in the mud of a homeland that could not hold your heart.

Save what remains of your life... the part lost like ink on unread paper, like a song that never found a listening ear, like a poem torn apart by speeches that only listen to those who shout lies and dance skillfully in the auction of betrayal.

Do not think you are alone... We are many. We carry our bags in our chests, not in our hands, and we write on the walls of the heart: “Here passed a homeland, and it did not stop.”

O you who found no shadow under your tribe’s sun, no seat at your clan’s wedding, no name on the waiting list around the table of justice... do not fear, for exile is more merciful than an embrace laced with daggers, or a homeland that sees you as a stranger if you think, an accused if you are silent, and a traitor if you dream of more than a wall, a bite, and a false anthem.

Migrate... for when you cross the borders, you are not fleeing from people, but from the forged copies of them, those who emptied you of yourself and hung a sign on your back saying: “Only fit to serve their queues.”

Step out as the letter leaves the womb of silence, as the light escapes the holes of darkness. Do not look back, for longing is a hired killer in this story, mastering the stabs of memory.

And know... that a tree does not die when uprooted from its land, but it needs soil that does not spit on its roots, a sky that does not rain stones, and winds that do not break its branches because it is a stranger.

Exile may be the first homeland... the one that grants you your name without guardianship, grants you the right to cry without criminalization, and opens the door to freedom without asking about your lineage.

So do not hesitate...
Save your shadow from the guillotine, save your heart from humiliation, and save what remains of your wasted life. Dignity is not sold in markets, but it is bought at the price of departure.

And if one day they ask you: “Why did you leave?”
Say: “Because I found no place among them... so I made myself a seat in exile, where I place my heart and write.”