Capturing the atoms that make up the universe. Capturing and crystallising thoughts, moulding them into literary form. Writing is also a mental exercise, which starts with a very simple thing, and gradually, day after day, turns into something complex. The same could be said of Al-Bayyati's life. When a human being stays in one place, he's likely to die.
People too stagnate like water and air.
Therefore the death of nature, of words, of the spirit has prompted me to keep travelling, so as to encounter new suns, new springs, new horizons. A whole new world being born. Travelling, as such, must have implied much more than political survival. Even when he could return to his country following the Iraqi Revolution and declaration of the Republic in 1958, Al-Bayyati often chose to stay abroad. Nor to settle down.