The last time Nada saw her brother’s name displayed on her cell-phone screen she was out having fun with her friends. She didn’t feel like answering. ‘I’ll call him back later’, she told herself. When she called back, there was no answer any more. He was found on the back seat of his car in a coma, savagely beaten up. She would never know what happened to him. Or what he wanted to tell her that evening.
Like Nada, most of us, outsiders, try to keep at bay the Syrian catastrophe. It’s too terrible to deal with. There are too many deaths, too many complicated actors, factors, fractions, unknown historic facts and conflicting interests. There are upsurges of solidarity, particularly when the media brings us images of child victims, but then the conflict is pushed to the back burner again.
But get a little bit closer, reading books like In praise of hatred or Burning country, seeing documentaries like Return to Homs or Silvered water or following the work of Omar Abousaada and Mohammad Al Attar, and one can easily understand that those people whose homes are destroyed, whose country is looted and levelled, who arrive in masses at our increasingly hostile shores, are exactly like us, with our dreams and desires, with our baggage of unresolved problems, hidden conflicts and unanswered questions.
