In Syria, Mohammed Sharabah started writing poems to try and make sense of the turmoil unfolding around him.

They were in Arabic, and were about his destroyed farm and business, and his displaced family; a life picked up and scattered across the world.

‘If you have a sensitive feeling [about] what is around you, you should express it,’ Mohammed says.

He felt hopeless, powerless. Until he started to write.

‘My bullets are powerful yet gentle words,’ he wrote in one poem.

And so, after he was granted a protection visa late last year, Mohammed reloaded.

He wrote a poem thanking the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, and vowing to always remember them.

The poem, I will never say goodbye to the ASRC, was printed on personalised paper, like all Mohammed’s work, and dated New Year’s Day.

‘After a long deeply tense feeling of being horrified.

‘After my huge suspicious of no peace and safety in life.

‘In ASRC I started my recovery back to humanity.

‘In ASRC I started forgetting my melancholy,’ it reads.

A man of his word

Mohammed has kept his word; he was at the February volunteer information evening, providing traditional Syrian sweets.

He has no plans to say goodbye, this year or any other.