Het woord heeft mij gered

'I can't remember the day my dreams started, but I know when my nightmares did.' These are the words of Rodaan Al Galidi, writer, poet, asylum seeker. Years ago, he fled his native Iraq and got locked up for years in various Dutch refugee centres. When his request for asylum is turned down, he goes into hiding in a student room. He keeps poems there that he wrote in Iraq and new, Dutch texts for which he has meanwhile won several awards. Rodaan turns out to be both a charming and melancholy man. He candidly talks about his life, his inspirations and passions. His account is supplemented with his poems and pictures from his fatherland. Of the ordinary daily life, but also of war situations he once fled. He would like to do something for lovers who stayed behind, but he does not know how. Poems do not save lives, he feels. When Rodaan is finally eligible for the general pardon, he is fed up with life in the Netherlands and moves to Belgium, where everything still seems possible.