Tag: middle east

One Syrian Family’s Story of Staying

Smoke rises in Aleppo as fighting continued on 12/26/12 by Freedom House

I had breakfast with a friend last week. Someone I’ve known yet not seen for years. We bumped into each other again picking up our children from sports camp. The years had changed us, we were now working mothers and we both had Syria on our minds. I spent the summer in Damascus learning Arabic in 2009. The friendly people, their patience with my half assembled phrases, the ancient nature of ruins like Palmyra: I loved Al Shams (the sun) as Syria is known.

“My father sent us the paperwork for our property,” she said. “For safekeeping.” She described her father’s unwillingness to leave their home.  “The people of Aleppo spent their money on their houses rather than on airplane tickets. Whenever they had money, they would buy property in their city, following a very common adverb: ‘the money you don’t spend in your land is neither yours or your children’s’.

As she spoke, her brown eyes dewy with worry about her father, the images of refugees being pulled from Hungarian trains or capsizing in the ocean on their way to Greece scrolled across my mind’s eye.

“I told him, Daddy, you can forget about it. That is all paper.” She flapped an imaginary stack of contracts, flying away in the wind. Her voice rasped with the knowledge the final period of her father’s life was being spent in mortal danger, safeguarding the same property he had spent his youth garnering for her and her siblings.

Which would we chose, forced with the option of uncertain life as a refugee, refused from most countries, or certain peril, a resident of the house you had worked so hard to provide for your family?

The conflict in Syria will change this generation and those who follow. What often gets overlooked in the rush for food and shelter is that the survivors could use family counseling and mental health support. (Not to diminish their experiences in any way, but wouldn’t it be great if we could access family therapy over our lifetimes?

 
1. How many of your family members remain in Syria?
My parents, grandmother and uncle are still there.

2. What keeps them there?
My father is descended from a feudal family that lost most of its properties between Abdul el Nasser’s Agrarian Reform Law and the Syrian Baath reform (between the 70’s and 80’s).  He refuses to leave the house even for a short vacation. He is scared of not being able to come back to Aleppo and getting stuck somewhere else as stranger. It’s as if his final duty is to guard the houses and lands he spent his life fighting for.

My mom is more flexible. She would take the 10 hours of risky roads to reach the only international airport from where she can fly out her to meet us. The 2-3 month visits per year makes her strong enough to go back to fuel-lacking cold seasons and year round lack of electricity and water.

My grandmother is a 90 something. She was out of Aleppo for 6 months in order to get medical treatment. As soon as she was able to handle the return journey, she made it back to home. She said she felt like her soul had been given back to her when she was surrounded by her belongings.

My uncle is a pediatrician. He sent his kids to pursue their university studies in the US, accompanied by their mom. Very few doctors are left in Aleppo. This is how is managing to keep his private clinic open.

3. What do you want readers to know about the crisis in Syria?
Syria is full of ambitious young people. She is a country of very good resources but with a repressive regime. I am not surprised at the amount of violence we see happening. How can we expect people who suffered of all kinds of humiliation, torture, and suppression, for 40 years, to fight the regime’s bullets as peaceful protestors or with yoga? They use the same language that has been taught to them.

I really believe in education. Nothing can heal the ruined generation, but at least we can save the future one.

4. How can we help either those fleeing or those staying?
The main help is to raise the voice to stop the WAR. Assad’s regime preys on innocent people.

The Mohadoha Stop on the #RRBC Back to School Book & Blog Block Party

block-party-badge1The writers from the Rave Reviews Book Club have gotten together to organize an exciting blog hop – you can visit stops to enter prizes every day in September. Leave a comment below for your chance to win a copy of any books (check out the options in the sidebar).

Welcome to new visitors to this blog. I’d like to tell new and familiar readers about the back story behind my new series, Crimes in Arabia.

I’m writing from Doha, Qatar. There will be five winners, randomly chosen from comments below. I’ll be in touch to see which reading format you prefer.

I didn’t control my Muse. Not in a specific way to generate particular ideas. Sure, I sit down several times a week and force myself to produce as much as I can in the few hours I have between kids’ birthday parties and swim lessons. I go away once a year, for a week, (or longer, if I can find a place to stash the kids) to write, mingle with other writerly types, and figure out how I can get better at storytelling. The ideas for my previous books often began with a central question. One that rolls around and around on deck, waiting for her turn at the keyboard. How a modern person with traditional values finds love is at the center of my first paperback Love Comes Later. The answer is the story.

In The Dohmestics, I explore how well we know those closest to us or ourselves. The ensemble cast in the novel is a composite of people I’ve known while living in the Middle East country of Qatar. Their tangled lives represent the ways in which expats and their domestic help support and infuriate each other. Perhaps because my books ponder issues, rather than focus on a sequence of events, I resist categorization as a genre writer. My novels can’t really find a home like others, where stories cluster, based on common devices or types. Yet, for the last year or so, I have been trying to get a handle on myself as a writer and channel ideas instead of letting them lead me into genre-defying projects.

Not as easy as it sounds.

Crime is what I hoped to get into one year ago: July 2014. Not in real life, as it were, but for my writing. If you can get a believable, likeable, empathetic detective type, you are golden. The books seem to write themselves. Scandinavian writers like Steig Larrson and Henning Mankel had inspired me for years. They took the genre as a venue for social critique and pointed out the failure of Nordic utopia. I’ve seen other places struggle with the burden of wealth and a small citizenry.

I set down a nascent story during National Novel Writing Month in 2015. The premise was simple: a main character living in a labor camp in the Arabian Gulf, one of the kind present in monthly sports news about the 2022 World Cup. The Migrant Report was my first attempt to research, outline, plan, write, and revise a novel from start to finish. The first manuscript was 50,000 word. The published version, now available at online retailers, is almost double the original word count.I’m nervous, I’m elated. One second I worry I’ve gotten it all wrong; the next I’m telling everyone this is the best material I’ve ever written. If you’d like to review The Migrant Report and tell me your thoughts, drop me a comment below.

What type of stories do you like to read or write?

 

Superb Ways to Show Without Telling

nanoIn the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, I know exactly which creature I am: the hare. This was evident when I was younger: studying a bit all semester and sleeping while my college roommate crammed all night, her Dr. Pepper’s lined up on her desk. When the exams were handed back we each had an A; hers was .5 higher than mine.

The memory of the lesson I learned that day stays with me: do a little bit at a time and you’ll be done by the deadline. This was my secret to NaNoWriMo 2014. I began the month on an overnight flight to Prague for a conference, with my laptop out, typing away. There was a week or so where I thought the story I was telling was utter rubbish; then the detective found his sidekick and sparks flew.

You’ve got a great story, I told myself, in the lead up to Thanksgiving when it was unlikely I would be able write one word, while hosting 7 adults and 7 children. 30,000 words that didn’t exist before November 1.

Then an interesting thing happened: I went through my chapter list on Saturday and Sunday, adding words to those under 1666 (the daily NaNo average).

11:30 p.m. on November 30th (the last day you can get in your 50,000 words) I uploaded my manuscript.

Yesterday I wrote another 1200 words. That hare won the race. This hare has more story to tell.

Here’s the final excerpt I’ll share in my NaNo journey.

 

Amita, Manu’s sister, is looking for her brother who was reported to have entered the country a few weeks ago. Her dismay is representative of the many families who do not hear from their relatives once they enter their host countries.

Stay tuned for more updates about this work in progress (and the title is still missing…).

PS this scene employs the infamous writing adage “Show, don’t tell” the reader what’s going on with your characters. We try to experience Amita’s confusion with her, rather than learning about it second hand.

 

——————-

 

Amita took another step forward, grateful he hadn’t pushed past her like so many other Europeans did when given half the chance. “I look for my brother,” she said. She pushed the passport copy of Manu and his approved work visa under the opening.

 

“You housemaid?” The man asked, his hands unmoving.

 

“I’m looking for Laxmi Pande,” Amita switched to Hindi.

 

The man’s narrowed gaze is why she had hoped Madam Cindy would take her to the embassy; her whiteness would have shamed him into being helpful.

 

“She not here.”

 

“My brother missing,” Amita said. “He here for three weeks. I no see him.” She managed in the English he was forcing her to speak. “Miss Laxmi she arrange contract for him.”

 

“That’s terrible,” the woman murmured behind her.

 

The man picked up the sheet of paper. There was no nametag for her to record a name, like Sir Paul had asked her to get before he left on his trip. He would have come with her but he had to go to a conference in Paris. Busy. Everyone was busy.

 

“Contracts,” he said, tossing the paper back at her.

 

“This not contract?” Amita asked in confusion. This was the document the woman had supplied the last time she visited the embassy, looking for a job for Manu. She had promised an office job, as a kitchen service man, boy as they were called here, where he would bring water, tea, coffee, or juice to those having meetings.

 

The man turned in his chair and tapped the window in the direction of one of the stations in the main room. “Contracts, there. Go see contracts.”

 

Amita picked up the copies of the visa and passport, the only tangible proof she had that her brother had made plans to join her in the Arabian Gulf. She moved through the rows of chairs to the counter the receptionist had indicated. There were two men here, one seated, the other standing and pointing out something in a stack of papers. Similar stacks rose like little towers on every surface of the room, some in chairs as well. The men in this room stopped talking when she approached. “My brother,” she said. She pressed the papers forward again. “I no hear from my brother.”