The home that was our country
Subtitle: a memoir of Syria
By: Alia Malek
Publisher: Nation Books
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 334
ISBN-13: 9781568585321
Subjects: Family; Biography; History
Description: In The Home that Was My Country, Syrian-American journalist Alia Malek chronicles her return to her family home in Damascus and the history of the Jabban apartment building. Here, generations of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Armenians lived, worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters. In telling the story of her family over the course of the last century, Alia brings to light the triumphs and failures that have led Syria to where it is today.

"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." -- Publisher's description
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-334).
Table of contents: title: Leaving; title: Generations. Origins ; Sheika ; Adrift ; Pack your bags and go ; Locked in; title: Locked out. Anywhere but here ; No-man's-land ; They did it to themselves; title: In the eye of the belly. Return ; Tahrir Squares ; Psychodrame ; Fatherland ; In the cards ; Routine ; Suspicion ; Unraveling ; Power ; Displaced ; Gone; title: Bound.