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Summary
Summary
At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parent's decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who lived in the Tahaan building, past and present, Alia portrays the Syrians-the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, and Kurds-who worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters, mirroring the political shifts in their country. Restoring her family's home as the country comes apart, she learns how to speak the coded language of oppression that exists in a dictatorship, while privately confronting her own fears about Syria's future.
The Home That Was Our Country is a deeply researched, personal journey that shines a delicate but piercing light on Syrian history, society, and politics. Teeming with insights, the narrative weaves acute political analysis with a century of intimate family history, ultimately delivering an unforgettable portrait of the Syria that is being erased.
Author Notes
Alia Malek is an award-winning journalist and civil rights lawyer. She is the author of A Country Called Amreeka and editor of Patriot Acts and EUROPA . Her reporting has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Nation , and Christian Science Monitor , among others.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Malek's (A Country Called Amreeka) multigenerational memoir is a brilliant combination of geopolitics and family history. In an accessible way to general readers, she chronicles the complex and devastating history of Syria, from the Ottoman Empire's rule and the shift to French colonization to the country's independence and the rise of the Assad regime. Malek begins with her great grandfather's success as a businessman in the early stages of Syria's independence in the 1940s and continues through Bashar Al-Assad's authoritarian regime and Malek's migration from her family's reclaimed home in Damascus, eloquently exploring grief, resilience, and loss. She is a deft reporter and storyteller. She offers first-hand accounts and her astute political analysis as she traverses countries including Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, France, and Syria. At the core of this book are the chilling effects the regime of the Assad family-beginning with Hafez (Bashar's father)-have on the Syrian people: sectarian rifts, disappeared citizens, extreme censorship, a bloated refugee crisis, and countless deaths in a nonstop war with humanitarian aid cut off. Malek courageously tells the stories of unforgettable family members and friends, including underground humanitarian aid workers who continue despite the risk of torture and execution. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Lawyer and journalist Malek's powerful memoir beautifully captures the history of her family and of their country. Born in Baltimore to Syrian immigrant parents, Malek (A Country Called Amreeka, 2009) always felt connected to her Syrian family, especially her grandmother Salma. Her narrative begins in 1889 with Salma's grandmother, known for opening her doors to anyone in need, and Salma's father, a charismatic community leader. Malek traces their stories through Salma's life in Damascus, her parents' engagement and move to Maryland, and her childhood visits back to Syria. As an adult, Malek lives and travels extensively in the region. She experiences daily life under the oppressive Assad regime, where citizens live in constant fear of informants and state violence. In 2011, Malek moves to Damascus to renovate her grandmother's apartment while reporting anonymously on the rise of resistance, activism, and armed conflict in Syria. She operates under the ever-present threat of the secret police, known for detaining and torturing suspected dissenters. Malek's writing vividly captures the personalities of her family members and friends as well as her own impressions of Syria, allowing readers insight into the personal stakes of the ongoing war.--Chanoux, Laura Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE HOME THAT WAS OUR COUNTRY: A Memoir of Syria, by Alia Malek. (Nation Books, $27.99.) This Syrian-Americanjournalist moved to Damascus in 2011 to renovate a family apartment. Her insightful reporting on the war's effects on the population and her account other grandmother's life create a history of Syria. WE CROSSED A BRIDGE AND IT TREMBLED: Voices From Syria, by Wendy Pearlman. (Custom House/HarperCollins, $24.99.) A politics professor collects accounts of refugees in the Middle East and Europe. She foregrounds the extraordinary heroism of ordinary Syrians, both those who are trapped in the country and those who struggle to make new lives. THE CHANGELING, by Victor LaValle. (Spiegel & Grau, $28.) In this modern-day fairy tale, set in New York City, a young father encounters "the old kind" of evil. The anxieties of modern parenting and the rigors of survival in urban America all have their place in this strange and wonderful new novel. HUNGER: A Memoir of (My) Body, by Roxane Gay. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99.) Theessayist and novelisttells how she was gangraped at 12 and subsequently gained weight to protect herself. Her memoir is an intellectually rigorous and deeply moving exploration of the ways trauma, stories and desire construct our reality. HENRY DAVID THOREAU: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls. (University of Chicago, $35.) This new life of Thoreau, in time for his 200th birthday, paints a moving portrait of a brilliant, complex man. One of the book's pleasures is the way it transports us back to America in the first half of the 19 th century. THE ISLAMIC ENLIGHTENMENT. The Struggle Between Faith and Reason: 1798 to Modern Times, by Christopher de Bellaigue. (Liveright, $35.) This fascinating study of Middle Eastern scholars and political figures who grappled with reform and modernization in the 19 th and 20 th centuries reveals the multiplicity of Muslim identities and loyalties. THERE YOUR HEART LIES, by MaryGordon. (Pantheon, $26.95.) The heroine of this exceptional new novel is a 92-year-old widow who defied her wealthy Catholic family to become a nurse during the Spanish Civil War. In the present, the woman forms abond with her granddaughter, who has come to live with her. THE GREAT NADAR: The Man Behind the Camera, by Adam Begley. (Tim Duggan, $28.) This biography of Félix Tournachon, known as Nadar, a 19th-century French photographer who was one of the art's greatest portraitists, is the first to appear in English. QUIET UNTIL THE THAW, by Alexandra Fuller. (Penguin Press, $25.) This ardent and original novel dives deep into Lakota culture and history. Many of the events it describes are rooted in history, and it culminates in the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Library Journal Review
American by birth, Syrian by parentage, journalist and civil rights lawyer Malek (A Country Called Amreeka) has the cultural and linguistic fluency to be both insider and outsider in either country. Through four generations of extended family stories-from her wealthy businessman great--grandfather who outlived the Ottoman Empire to contemporary cousins trying to survive the Assad regime-Malek traces a century-plus of tumultuous Syrian history. That she's her own narrator proves ideal, moving between the personal and political with agile familiarity. Arriving in Damascus in 2011 to finish restoring her late grandmother's home, which belonged to her mother but was occupied for decades by a trenchant relative, Malek reveals, "I wanted to be there at a moment when the entire region was in the throes of change. For an optimist, Syria was on the precipice of something better. For the pessimist, it teetered dangerously on the abyss." Initially that self-declared optimist, Malek experiences intimidation, abuse, and terror-both hers and others'-that sends her back stateside in May 2013, leaving her family and friends relieved for her safety. and their own. VERDICT Readers seeking to learn more about the human side of international tumult will find inspiration and insight in this affecting memoir. ["An extremely timely and highly readable narrative that humanizes one of today's most complex political tragedies and will intrigue readers interested in current world affairs": LJ 1/17 review of the Nation: Perseus hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Transliteration Note | p. vii |
| Map of Syria | p. viii |
| Prologue: Leaving | p. ix |
| Part 1 Generations | |
| 1 Origins | p. 3 |
| 2 Sheikha | p. 28 |
| 3 Adrift | p. 63 |
| 4 Pack Tour Bags and Go | p. 83 |
| 5 Locked In | p. 96 |
| Part 2 Locked Out | |
| 6 Anywhere but Here | p. 113 |
| 7 No-Man's-Land | p. 133 |
| 8 They Did It to Themselves | p. 143 |
| Part 3 In the Eye of the Belly | |
| 9 Return | p. 167 |
| 10 Tahrir Squares | p. 182 |
| 11 Psychodrame | p. 198 |
| 12 Fatherland | p. 209 |
| 13 In the Cards | p. 223 |
| 14 Routine | p. 236 |
| 15 Suspicion | p. 252 |
| 16 Unraveling | p. 276 |
| 17 Power | p. 289 |
| 18 Displaced | p. 300 |
| 19 Gone | p. 309 |
| Epilogue: Bound | p. 314 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 325 |
| A Note on Sources | p. 329 |