Syria Memoir

Jamal Saeed arrived as a refugee in Canada in 2016. In his native Syria, as a young man, his writing pushed both social and political norms. For this reason, as well as his opposition to the regimes of the al-Assads, he was imprisoned on three occasions for a total of 12 years. In each instance, he was held without formal charge and without judicial process. My Road from Damascus not only tells the story of Saeed’s severe years in Syria’s most notorious military prisons but also his life during the country’s dramatic changes.

قد تكون معلومة نادرة وخبراً يثير الدهشة عندما نعرف أن الروائية الإنكليزية الشهيرة أغاثا كريستي قد عاشت مطولاً في سورية والعراق...فقد تركت كريستي إرثاً غنياً من الروايات و المسرحيات البوليسية الأكثر انتشاراً في الأدب العالمي الحديث، و كانت حياتها عاصفة لا تهدأ، فمع شغفها المتواصل بالكتابة اليومية كانت تطوف حول العالم لذا نراها ترصد في كتابها هذا وقائع الحياة الاجتماعية والاقتصادية في سوريا، في المرحلة الأولى من نشوء الدولة السورية التي كانت تتشكل في ظل الانتداب الفرنسي خلال أعوام 1934/‏ 1935.

The events of the Arab Spring have come to be overshadowed by the civil war in the Arabic-speaking nation of Syria, which has been ruled throughout the 21st century by Bashar al-Assad. Though he had not planned on ruling Syria, several events conspired to make Bashar the successor of his father, Hafez. Though the West frequently looked for signs that Bashar might be a reformer, due in part to his formerly popular Western wife, Assad remained part of a critical alliance with Iran and the sub-state groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

On New Year's Eve in 2012, Matthew Schrier was headed home from Syria, where he'd been photographing the country's civil war. Just 45 minutes from the safety of the Turkish border, he was taken prisoner by the al-Nusra Front. Over the next seven months he would endure torture and near starvation in six brutal terrorist prisons. And, eventually, he would escape. In this gripping, raw, and surprisingly funny memoir, Schrier details the horrifying and frequently surreal experience of being a slight, wisecracking Jewish guy held captive by the world's most violent Islamic extremists.