Migration stories, says Abou Farman, are often told through the personal struggles and travails of the migrant, the great voyager figure of our most recent centuries, the harbinger of hybridity, the metaphor for risk, sacrifice, toil, abuse, inhumanity. And humanity. These are the stories (both horrific and redemptive) that we hear about in the news, in taxis and airports, in bars and corner coffee shops. They are both real and existential, shared, denied, argued about, internalized. Seldom are the threads of such narratives woven together and imbued with the originality of insight brought to the page by Farman. In some cases, money changes hands, fake ID cards are printed, military release papers are forged, and in secret meetings shivery with anxiety and excitement, a place and a time are whispered. On arrival, three magic words: "I am refugee." Telling modern tales of transit, Farman ranges far and wide on the migratory map of human history, focusing on such themes as border posts and paradise, surveillance and passports, Third World Border Hysteria and homeland.

Abou FAbou Farman is an anthropologist, writer and artist. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bard College, NY, and once worked for the United Nations (DPI). His writing has appeared in numerous publications including Maisonneuve, The Utne Reader, The Globe and Mail and the National Post, garnering two Critic'd Desk Awards from Arc, Canada's National Poetry Magazine, and two Canadian National Magazine Award nominations. His essays have been published in anthologies and textbooks, most recently in Best Canadian Essays 2010. He has been awarded a Banff Centre Literary Journalism residency and a George Marshall Fellowship from City University of New York. His film credits include screenwriter on Sound Barrier (Tribeca Film Festival) and Cut! (Venice Film Festival) and producer on Vegas: Based on a True Story (Venice Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival), all directed by Amir Naderi. As part of the duo caraballo-farman, he has exhibited installation and video art at the Tate Modern, UK, and PS1/MOMA, NY. caraballo-farman has been the recipient of several grants and awards, including a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, a NYFA Fellowship, and residencies at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Art Omi. Clerks of the Passage is his first book.arman is an anthropologist, writer and artist. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bard College, NY, and once worked for the United Nations (DPI).His writing has appeared in numerous publications including Maisonneuve, The Utne Reader, The Globe and Mail and the National Post, garnering two Critic'd Desk Awards from Arc, Canada's National Poetry Magazine, and two Canadian National Magazine Award nominations. His essays have been published in anthologies and textbooks, most recently in Best Canadian Essays 2010. He has been awarded a Banff Centre Literary Journalism residency and a George Marshall Fellowship from City University of New York. His film credits include screenwriter on Sound Barrier (Tribeca Film Festival) and Cut! (Venice Film Festival) and producer on Vegas: Based on a True Story (Venice Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival), all directed by Amir Naderi. As part of the duo caraballo-farman, he has exhibited installation and video art at the Tate Modern, UK, and PS1/MOMA, NY. caraballo-farman has been the recipient of several grants and awards, including a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, a NYFA Fellowship, and residencies at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Art Omi.

Abou Farman's profile page

"You are born once from your mother's womb, and a second time from the belly of a 747."
Abou Farman tells the story of migrants and of migration with the formal audacity of having lived and outlived it--being born again onto it, as it were. These are not migration stories that solicit or even generate your sympathies. No, these stories transform you into a different plane. I have always thought there is no more home from which to be exiled. Now I see why and how that same idea can be drawn in formal outlines. Abou Farman is the closest thing to Juan Goytisolo I have read in recent years--making of migration and exile not an exception but an existential condition --of being, of existence itself, of passage as presence. Uncanny." -- Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University.