Between Dust And Stars Poem by Yousif Ibrahim Abubaker Abdalla

We set off on the seventeenth of June, our lives folded into a car my anchors and my wandering stars and a prayer tucked into every pocket. The morning air carried dust from the road and the distant scent of the river, and the sun was just a promise on the horizon. We left the straight path, the one that had been mapped for safety, the one that knew danger all too well, and we chose the winding road instead. Perhaps it was courage, or perhaps desperation, that made us turn away from certainty. For twelve hours, the dust rose around us like ghosts, carried by the wind that whistled through the dry trees and across the barren plains. The children asked their endless questions "Are we there yet? " and I answered with the rhythm of my own hope, "Soon… soon… soon…"
Above us, the stars hung like witnesses. They did not judge, but they knew. They followed our journey across rivers and deserts, over sand and stone, across the bones of the land that had seen more than any of us could carry.
We arrived at the White Nile late in the afternoon, our eyes blurred from dust and exhaustion, our clothes smelling of sun and sand. The river shimmered under the dying light, a silver thread connecting earth and sky, as if it had waited for us all along. It was the week of fire and offering, a time of sacrifice that felt mirrored in our own surrender the quiet of our everyday lives, the certainty we had laid down without a word. My wandering stars ran into the arms of our elders, and their laughter stitched together pieces of the world that war had torn apart. For one week, that river town became a fragile island, a hidden sanctuary where time paused, and the world seemed to linger just beyond its borders.
After that week, we moved on to a tranquil town. Its streets were narrow and shaded, its walls painted in muted ochres and reds that reminded me of home. A door opened like a lighthouse in the fog, inviting us to step inside. Six months passed in borrowed walls, in mornings that were never quite ours, in strength borrowed from the kindness of strangers. I learned to sleep in rooms that were not my own, to dream in spaces that were not mine, yet in the quiet hours I could hear the voices of my wandering stars rising above deserts and rivers, landing in my chest like stars finally finding their orbit.
Ten days with my anchors and stars felt like rain trapped in a desert jar, concentrated and precious. They taught me the depth of fatherhood in a way that the passage of years often cannot; ten days before the pendulum swung again and I had to leave. Back to the quiet town, back to the river town, back and forth, the rhythm of presence and absence swinging over our lives like a shadow pendulum.
Eastward I journeyed, carrying dust in my shoes and hope in my chest, to a city cradled beneath the eastern mountains. Jagged peaks stood like silent sentinels, watching over the weary below. Two years passed there, not gently, not kindly. Classrooms became islands, words became bridges, reaching across strangers and across my own sense of exile. During that dark season, I discovered people who opened their doors and hearts to me, whose kindness became a tether holding me steady while the world trembled outside.
And yet, in the midst of all this movement, the war stole the heart that held me. She was in the city of dust and memory, through nights filled with gunfire and dawns of ash. I was not there to hold her hand, not there to whisper goodbye. War takes many things, but absence is its sharpest weapon.
All these years, I have walked paths that were not mine away from my anchors, away from my wandering stars, moving from town to town, from dust to river, from mountains to classrooms, carrying fragments of home in my pockets and in my prayers. Twelve hours on winding roads so that my wandering stars could reach love. Six months in one town. Ten days in another. Two years in the east. A heart lost. A country scarred.
And still I walk. And still I remember. And still I carry hope like fire cradled in my hands, like a chant rising from my chest, like a drumbeat echoing through the night. The road twists, the road bends, the road waits. I follow it. I follow it. I follow it.
One day, the road home will be straight again. One day, the road home will cradle my wandering stars' laughter without fear. One day, the road home will lead me to where the heart that held me still watches the rising sun. Until then, I walk. I remember. I chant. I endure. I hope