"Haji Gora Haji talks to ghosts. At nearly 85, he’s one of Zanzibar’s most revered elders, and the archipelago’s unofficial poet laureate."

"He spends his mornings in a bed draped with mosquito nets, his mind wandering between the real world of his small, sun-baked room in Bububu, a fishing village five miles north of Zanzibar’s capital city, and the imagined world of the dead. 'My father has returned to a state of childhood, as it’s written in the Koran,' says his son.... 'It’s our duty to care for him and make sure [he] is remembered.'... Despite his many achievements, Haji Gora lives in poverty and virtual isolation.... He often refers to imaginary meetings with scholars and publishers. It seems he wants to get back to the business of poetry, his enduring love, but is waylaid on this threshold, a man between two worlds."

From "Between Worlds/A family struggles to save the work of Zanzibar’s greatest poet" (Poetry Foundation).