So we decided to travel

This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"'In So we decided to travel, ' al-Mutanabbi Street is a workplace, a heritage site, a hub of white-collar ambitions, and the occasion for an afternoon stroll. Beyond al-Mutanabbi Street is a landscape of ample houses and date palms; swarming militias and indiscriminate threats; fish, rice, kebab, and mothers too used to waiting. 'So we decided to travel' is a book written by Iraqi refugees living in the United States who wished to memorialise the losses, trials, and unlikely triumph of surviving in Iraq since 2003. The writers, who elected to remain anonymous in order to protect family members still living in their home country, shared poems, reflections, stories, family photographs, aphorisms, quotes from popular songs, favourite recipes, and prayers in the atonal cries of collective mourning. As one writer put it, we are taught to 'keep the sadness in our chests, but we have to take it out.' Activists in the U.S. also kept a sadness in their chests over the past ten years, watching their country go to war despite their protests, hearing of the militias that subsequently poured into Iraq, and with them, the countless lives caught in the crossfire. What have we done, here in the U.S., with this sadness? Have we taken it out of our chests? This book is testament not only to what was lost in this war, but also to the writers' courage to grieve. May they give us the courage to grieve with them, and confront the losses we tried, but failed, to avert"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"Book artists Avery Bazemore, Lauren Schott, and Kevin Sheby designed and bound the books in homage to their school - the North Bennet St. School - whose founding mission was to provide immigrants with the skills needed for gainful employment in their new home. Many of the writers who contributed to this volume continue to seek gainful employment here in the U.S. It is not too late for us to fight alongside them, this time for the affordable housing and education necessary to survive in a broken economy"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.