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Louis Yako
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Born
Iraq
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September 2020
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Louis Yako
If I told you, it would cease to be a mystery!
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Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile
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published
2021
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4 editions
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أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]
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published
2016
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سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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published
2025
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![سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere] by Louis Yako](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1752515137l/238750350._SX50_.jpg "سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere] by Louis Yako")
“[Happy New Year to Our Complicity]
Let us make this year truly new, and truly happy, by ceasing to be complicit, and by abandoning the same worn-out phrases: "Wishing you a wonderful year!" or "Happy New Year!" Enough of deceiving ourselves. We are not well. We are not happy. And there is nothing new under a sun that still rises with weary reluctance, its heat growing fiercer each year over a world filled with killing, war, and gratuitous death. And so long as we do nothing to change our miserable reality except through dubious funding from abroad, then allow me, my friends, to wish us all a new year overflowing with more: more shopping malls and more consumption, more bombing, destruction, occupation, and partition, more military bases, more arms deals, more gunpowder, missiles, and bombs. Allow me to wish us a year in which even more cities and civilizations are destroyed in the name of revolutions orchestrated by those who care for nothing but wealth. I wish us a new year filled with a silence more hideous than the silence of a ...more Louis Yako |
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“[The Losers]
The losers are closer to my heart, for they were right. Integrity does not prevail, as it does in those trivial Hollywood endings. It always loses, outnumbered by those who are afraid, by those who are willing to sell, and by those whose interests cannot coexist with the demands of honesty. I love the losers because they were right. And I, who once placed my faith in humanity, lost as well. 12 December 2024” Louis Yako |
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“[Lights]
The lights of churches and monasteries, of Christmas trees and radiant mosques. Dim lights glowing in warm houses in foreign cities where I wandered alone. The lights of distant cars moving across bridges, seen from hotel windows on clear, moonlit nights. The light of candles and lanterns. The lights of tiny shops hidden in ancient, forgotten lanes. The lights of ships sailing toward destinations I shall never reach. The lights of streetlamps on dark, rain-soaked winter nights. The lights of remote beacons and unseen fishermen. The faint glow I once caught in the eyes of kind strangers in places tourists never visit. I loved every one of those lights. Now they undo me, because they remind me of the beautiful light in your eyes that has been extinguished. 13 November 2024” Louis Yako |
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“It is complicated,’ they say. I am so sick of this response. Many people use it repeatedly to escape depth and confronting reality. They use it to take solace in the fact that they don’t know (or don’t wish to know) the ugly truth of what is happening right in front of their eyes. They reduce crimes, injustice, war, pain, hunger, rape, and everything that must be unpacked, dissected, and confronted to this: ‘It is complicated.’ They say this about COVID-19, too. Oh, how I have grown to hate this response. Every time I hear this statement from someone, it sounds like ‘I am a loser’ to my ears. ‘It is complicated’ is the favorite response of lazy brains that refuse to think and do. Oh, my friends, I insist it is not complicated. If you really want to know, it is not so complicated. However, if you are really looking for reasons and excuses to justify your silence, complicity, and to protect your self-interest, then you are absolutely right – it is complicated!”
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“Oh, my friends, the first wish I have for the new year is to change the worn-out greeting: 'happy new year'. There is no happiness, only fleeting moments of joy. There is nothing new under the sun, only new ways of looking at the same eternal challenges and unresolved questions. There is no point in wishing for a perfect health in a profoundly sick world – the view is much clearer and more interesting when living on the edge. And so, I wish you all endurance as we go through another difficult year. I wish you courage to snatch a few more days (or moments) of joy as another year slips through the fingers of Time. I wish you much strength to maintain your equilibrium as we face new earthquakes of uncertainty in the coming year. Most of all, I wish we never give up on the possibility of doing things otherwise. And, of course, I wish you much love.”
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“This is precisely why the mainstream media’s language has failed us, it has not been telling us what we really need to know, because their language marches in step with that of the bankers, warmongers, oppressors, and executioners. We need a new language of radical love not radical hate.”
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“Real wisdom lies not in just paying attention to what is being said, but in what is omitted from speeches.”
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“Isn't it quite ironic that we may be coming to a day when we may find all kinds of full-time, steady and secure jobs at universities for all, except jobs for educators?”
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“We have to bear in mind that oppression is almost never imposed on people in one big dose, because that could trigger an immediate revolution and uprising. Instead, oppression is given in small doses in such a way that each dose in itself is insignificant or negligible, but it is the total amount of these small doses that creates a great state of oppression and injustice.”
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“The whole concept of “competition” needs to be revisited. In my view, competition and wisdom are two different paths that will never intersect ... we need to seek wisdom rather than playing games and politics against our peers to get status and power.”
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“We must rethink and change the worn out concept of the “job market” under capitalism, which is designed to dispose of people in a second if deemed unprofitable to the system.”
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