The Nightmare Sequence

by Omar Sakr, Safdar Ahmed (Illustrator)

The Nightmare Sequence is a searing response to the atrocities in Gaza and beyond since October 2023. Heartbreaking and humane, it is a necessary portrait of the violence committed by Israel and its Western allies.

Through poetry and visual art, Omar Sakr and Safdar Ahmed capture these historic injustices, while also critiquing the role of art and media – including their own – in this time. Born of collective suffering and despair, their collaboration interrogates the position of the terrible and helpless distance of vision, the impact of being exposed to violence of this scale on a daily basis, and what it means to live in a society that is actively participating in the catastrophic destruction of Arabs and Muslims overseas.

With a foreword by Palestinian American poet George Abraham, The Nightmare Sequence is an insightful work of testimony that also considers how art is complicit in Empire. This transcendent book invokes the power of poetry and art to shift hearts and minds; it will serve as a vital record in decades to come.

Genres: Poetry, Middle East

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 8, 2025

About the author

Omar Sakr is an Arab Australian Muslim poet born and raised in Western Sydney. His debut collection of poetry, THESE WILD HOUSES (Cordite Books, 2017), was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe award and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize. His new book, THE LOST ARABS (UQP, 2019) was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, the John Bray Poetry Award, the Queensland Literary Awards, and the Colin Roderick Award. In 2020 he won the Woollahra Digital Literary Award for Poetry.

He has been anthologised in Best Australian Poems 2016 (Black Inc), and in Contemporary Australian Poetry (Puncher & Wattmann). His short fiction includes, 'An Arab Werewolf in Liverpool' in 'KINDRED: 12 Queer YA Stories' (Walker Books, 2019), and 'White Flu' in AFTER AUSTRALIA (Affirm Press, 2020). His essays have appeared most recently in MEANJIN (Autumn, 2019), MEET ME AT THE INTERSECTION (Fremantle, 2018) and GOING POSTAL (Brow Books, 2018).

Reviews

[ariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

harrowing and so relevant — really testifies to the power of and need for “more creative” dimensions of the arts to intervene in truth-telling

[Nalini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sakr and Ahmed’s project is a class act in solidarity: it shares the epistemic burden of raising awareness for a genocide without demanding anything of Palestinians, it raises funds for relief efforts, and finally, it resists the neoliberal impulse to commodify suffering for the artists’ own validation.

Full review on Overland’s website:
https://overland.org.au/2025/10/the-a...

[alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Free Palestine.

[Tara]

an incredibly powerful read that captures the haunting experience of watching from afar as people are slaughtered

[ValTheBookEater]

Like George's excellent introduction mentioned, Omar's poems are of "triggers and empires" especially as readers and citizens in Western countries that are complicit or "material enablers" of genocide.

This is an act of love and solidarity which "moves us beyond acts of witness and into acts of with-ness", to be expected of Omar's powerful words and linguistic arrangements.

But my goodness does Safdar Ahmed's art amplify the language. On their own, the imagery are haunting, profound and infinite in truth-telling.

[Peter Hollo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searing, painful, sometimes harrowing accounts of living through the genocide that we are still living through. They're all those things, these fragile poems, but oh they are so, so beautiful as well. The Nightmare Sequence itself, all 10 pages, 10 stanzas, is a jewel, and how cruel that it was this in which it was forged.

Safdar Ahmed's art, too, cuts right through to the moral core.
Devastating.

[Poppy Gee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hope this exquisite and powerful collection of poetry and art finds many readers.
For many of us, these poems and drawings will be devastatingly familiar. You won’t need to refer to the artist’s notes at the back to know you’re looking at Hind, the little girl who was shot at 355 times. The teddy bear strapped to the tank will be a familiar sight. You’ll recognise grandfather Khaled Nabhan cuddling his lifeless granddaughter Reem, who he calls ‘the soul of my soul’.
Omar Sakr is one of the best and brightest writers writing in Australia today. This collection will be studied by future generations trying to make sense of how our leaders allowed the genocide to happen.
These poems moved me deeply, resonated with me, and reshaped my thinking. Harrowing and heartbreaking, they’re also a testament to love and compassion in these darkest of times. I always try not to centre myself when I talk about Palestine. But I think when you respond to poetry it is quite personal. For me, this collection, and other literature that has been produced as a reaction to the genocide, is a comfort in a time when our leaders and our media have betrayed us in ways that are unforgiveable. They say good art should comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable, and this book does exactly that.
All profits go to Palestinian charities and relief efforts.

[Steven Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Nightmare Sequence is a punishing, necessary reading experience. In this bold collaboration, Omar Sakr provides poems of grief, anger, shame, guilt, love, fear and resistance, while Safdar Ahmed contributes visual art that confronts and amplifies every wound. Together they forge a work that feels like a scream set in ink and image.

It claws at the open wound in any empathetic reader, refusing distance. Its poems are short but jagged, pulling at heart-strings, boiling blood, uplifting the solemn. The visuals don’t simply illustrate - they mirror, disturb, compel. Over the arc of the book, we live through genocide in Gaza, through Omar’s inner agony, through collective suffering. This is not merely a political act of bearing witness, but a work of raw humanity.

It is the collective voice of those crying out for justice, carried across art, across disciplines. The Nightmare Sequence refuses silence, bestowing voice, pain, memory, insistence. Keep an eye on my full review for Westerly, this is a work that demands to be reckoned with.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a poetry collection but also a collection of illustrations, created in response to the genocide occurring in Palestine. Omar Sakr’s poetry is poignant and moving, and the illustrations by Safdar Ahmed bring attention to some of the more insidious aspects of what has occurred. I learnt things that I did not know because they are not being reported by mainstream media. I’m someone who finds it hard to watch the news at the best of times, so this was a difficult read for me but it was important. My only criticism of the book is that the explanation of the images is tucked away at the end of the book, which I didn’t realise until the end, so I often didn’t know what I was looking at. I found those explanations so helpful when I finally got to them, but I found myself glossing over what I was seeing as I read, which detracted from the impact of the illustrations. This was such an important book to read. 4.5 stars

[Denise A.H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A raw translation into words of what I had been feeling in my soul since October 2023. This collection of poems delved into the heaviness, grief, mundanity, helplessness, anger, confusion, moral injury and loss of self caused witnessing the genocide of Palestinians.

I couldn’t put this book down, but I did have a close my eyes several times, and breathe deep before continuing. The juxtaposition of the enigmatic poetry with the more obvious artwork in the book was masterful.

My favorite was “Working in the Genocide”, which perfectly sums up the painful duality of needing to attend to your job while being internally engulfed by the genocide.

The poems are short and sharp (with the exception of the titular piece which is longer), and so they draw you back to re-read again and again.

Sorely needed. Exceptionally vulnerable. Painfully honest.

Highly recommended.

[Laura J Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desperately difficult reading. Talking about the dazzling formal achievement of this book is a cop-out but I’m still going to say it: the experience of watching the genocide is caught and interrogated and held down for eviscerating scrutiny without sacrificing a molecule of attention on the people of Palestine. The blistering clarity of the poems and the drawings are matched and balanced. Rage and grief and bottomless compassion. This book is an object lesson in what it looks like to not look away. Free Palestine.

[Rania T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Putting in prose and visual the horrors of the genocide in Palestine. Comes with essay on the poetry and notes on the illustrations. With work like this, there is hope that humanity will shine through. Recommended.

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Painful, harrowing and yet very much needed. ‘The Nightmare Sequence’ is a searing examination of what it has been like to witness the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, told in poems and devastatingly rendered illustrations.

Free Palestine.

[Abby]

Poetry often goes above my head, or at least I have a hard time piecing together what it's talking about in a specific way, but I can still understand what it's saying in an abstract way. The meaning in this book is obvious and the value of what it's saying is priceless.

[Alana · Rating 3 out of 5]

free palestine