When I was growing up in Baghdad, whenever I wanted to do something or have something that my father deemed a “NO,” he would
relish saying in Arabic: “One does not achieve all that one wishes—Winds don’t always blow the way ships desire.”
Back then, I had no idea of the source of this saying. I do now, thanks to San Francisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil the founder of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project. He called for artists to respond to the 2005 bombing of Baghdad’s famed street of book- sellers named for the 10th century poet who my father loved quoting. I later remembered that when I was young, my father once took me there to browse through its bookstalls and purchase drawing papers for my art. I still wish and the winds continue to blow.

This book was dedicated to my father, Shwan Jamal Baban, and inspired by his quote of Al-Mutanabbi.

About Al-Mutanabbi
Abu at-Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Hussayn al-Mutanabbi al-Kindi was born in 915 in Kufa, Iraq and died in 965 AD during the Islamic Golden Age.
He is considered one of the greatest and most influential Arabic poets. His poems were—and still are— widely read in the Arab world; many of his lines are quoted as proverbs. Al-Mutanabbi’s arrogant, contentious nature often got him in serious trouble and his brazen speech may have led to his death.