I am not a writer by profession, but literature is my passion. I teach English language arts and ESL in an Edmonton junior high school. Usually, when I ask my students to write about their lives, even just their summer vacations, I’m met with whining. “I don’t know what to write!” So I was delighted when, one day in my office, a Grade 9 student named Abu Bakr al Rabeeah, who had fled the civil war in Syria, shared his secret wish: “I want to tell my story.”