Respectable Mr President,

This book is a history of soul, of my thoughts as a Central Asian for more than a decade, and it is related to one single word: War. In 2003, the US war machine followed a terrorist to Afghanistan, followed by the Iraqi War and the tangled warfare in Syria today. Over the last decade, wars have been circling around our skies and our hearts and minds with the result that millions of innocent people have been murdered and gone homeless. Since they left it, human beings have left Eden in their hearts and have been seeking for it. The realities now are cruel because of the war. One of the causes of the war is the Saddam Hussein regime and it was President George Bush who started the war machine. For eight years, you have been cleaning up the mess but I don’t want to blame anyone. Time is proof enough that there are no winners in any war. If there are any, they are those dictators who consolidate their regimes with people’s fears of wars and confusion and who are more happy than ever with their own virtues. I do not know how you feel about the wars that are still raging on when you have been in power for eight years. In a recent interview you said that it is important for the leaders not to ‘do stupid shit’, which moved me. We have something in common because, historically speaking, both you, as president of the United States of American, and I, are witnesses and each and every witness comes from a different angle. It is for this reason that I would like to present you with a gift copy of my poetry book, A Garden of Trees and Other Poems.

Regards,

Ardakh Nurgaz, a poet

Kazakhstan, Almaty, 10 August 2016