PITTSBURGH, 11 May 2003 — Saadi Youssef, Samuel Shimon and Sargon Boulus are among hundreds of Iraqi poets and writers scattered around the globe who have spent much of the past quarter century in exile, creating literature brimming with anguish, desolation and longing, in journals, in poetry readings and on websites.

Now, they wonder: Can we go home again? “Of course. I have to be back in the country,” said Youssef, one of Iraq’s foremost contemporary poets, during a telephone interview from his home in London.

“It is an exciting time.” Youssef, who has written dozens of books of poetry, including an anthology in English that was published several years ago, was a staunch opponent of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and was imprisoned and eventually cut off from his family after he left Iraq for good in 1979. Youssef says he has watched the televised images of mass street demonstrations by Shiite Muslims demanding an Islamic government run by religious clerics, but remains confident that Iraq’s unique history in the Middle East as a pluralistic, cosmopolitan culture will prevail. “We have had a history, at times, of political parties, of a free press, of open-minded religious leaders and honest businessmen,” Youssef said.

“We are really, in many ways, a multinational country.” Still, he said, it will be hard for the Iraqi people, after so many years of repression, to relearn freedom. Boulus, an Iraqi writer whose sensitive translations of American poetry into Arabic have earned him praise among scholars, agreed.

“This war created a tremendous vacuum, and everyone is rushing to fill it,” said Boulus, an American citizen who divides his time between San Francisco and Europe. The people filling the vacuum aren’t just clerics or self-appointed mayors. They also include many writers, critics, artists and others who are hurrying back home to take over newspapers, publishing houses and other cultural institutions.

Many of the expatriates are leftists, drummed out of Iraq after the Baathist Party cracked down on them in the late 1970s. Others are members of the Baathist Party who fled after falling out of favor with Saddam. Still others are “entrepreneurs,” Boulus said, with agendas of their own.

“This thing is so complicated,” he said. “If you go back after a month or two or three, all the newspapers, all the magazines, all the educational facilities, these will be taken over by certain groups. These are the places that publish your writing, and so, if you are not with them, they are closed to you.”

But Shimon, assistant editor of the Arab literary journal Banipal in London, remained optimistic that intellectual freedom would survive in post-Saddam Iraq, noting that a Communist publication, The People’s Way, began publishing again in Baghdad three weeks ago. The battle for Iraq’s intellectual life appears to be intensifying on all sides. As Youssef, the poet prepares to return to Iraq, he also dreads what he will find there. “After I watched the first day of the bombings, I woke up the next morning semi-paralyzed. I could not move,” he said, speaking in a deep voice. He said the scenes of combat around Basra were painful.