The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria

by Janine di Giovanni

Overview

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and the New York Post
Winner of the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award
Winner of the Hay Festival Medal for Prose
Finalist for the NYPL Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism
Shortlisted for the Moore Prize for Nonfiction

"Destined to become a classic." —Lisa Shea, Elle

A masterpiece of war reportage, The Morning They Came for Us bears witness to one of the most brutal internecine conflicts in recent history. Drawing from years of experience covering Syria for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and the front page of the New York Times, award-winning journalist Janine di Giovanni chronicles a nation on the brink of disintegration, all written through the perspective of ordinary people. With a new epilogue, what emerges is an unflinching picture of the horrific consequences of armed conflict, one that charts an apocalyptic but at times tender story of life in a jihadist war zone. The result is an unforgettable testament to resilience in the face of nihilistic human debasement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780871403834
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Janine di Giovanni, Middle East editor of Newsweek and contributing editor at Vanity Fair, has won seven major awards, including the National Magazine Award and two Amnesty International Awards. Her work is widely anthologized, and her article from Harper’s, "Life during Wartime," was chosen by Paul Theroux for The Best American Travel Writing. The author of seven books, di Giovanni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she was a Pakis Fellow. She lives in Paris.

Table of Contents

Maps x

Introduction xiii

1 Damascus - Thursday 28 June 2012 1

2 Latakia - Thursday 14 June 2012 11

3 Ma'loula and Damascus - June-November 2012 37

4 Horns - Thursday 8 March 2012 60

5 Darayya - Saturday 25 August 2012 74

6 Zabadani - Saturday 8 September 2012 89

7 Horns, Bab al-Sebaa Street - Sunday 14 October 2012 104

8 Aleppo - Sunday 16 December 2012 120

Epilogue - November 2016 160

Notes 174

Acknowledgements 178

Chronology 183

Index 201

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/18/2016
Veteran foreign correspondent di Giovanni (Ghosts by Daylight) brings her history of covering battle zones (among them Iraq, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Sarajevo) to this account of her experiences inside Syria from June to December 2012. Her work, informed by her extensive experience as a journalist, shows a keen ability to capture violent conflicts from multiple sides. Starting from the point when Syria, after a short-lived cease-fire, fell back into fighting, she describes the collapse of communities with reputations for diversity and tolerance—among them Aleppo, “the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth.” The peculiarities of modern urban warfare, in which the smells and sounds of war permeate everyday life, are graphically conveyed. Hunger prevails; vanquished diseases (polio, typhus, cholera) return; children are traumatized; and rape, torture, kidnapping, and beheading become conventional weapons. This book, haunted by the international failure to intervene effectively, gives readers an on-the-ground experience of the devastating seasons that followed the promise of the Arab Spring. Though di Giovanni does not make Syria’s civil war and its repercussions rationally comprehensible, she makes its reality fully tangible and tragic. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"A must read filled with bitter realities."

Christian Science Monitor - Denise Hassanzade Ajiri

"Ms. di Giovanni writes here with urgency and anguish—determined to testify to what she has witnessed because she wants ‘people never to forget.’…Her testimony is contained here in this searing and necessary book."

New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

"The Morning They Came for Us moves from a cosmopolitan ‘bubble of parties’ in 2011 to ‘the aftermath of a barrel bomb’ today as di Giovanni observes slaughter and rape with the equal (if occasionally opposing and heartbreaking) empathies of war correspondent and mother."

Vanity Fair - Lea Carpenter

"Heartbreaking…[A] haunting reminder of what the Syrian revolution, ultimately, is about…Amid our obsession with ISIS, these tales are worth remembering."

Anand Gopal

"Di Giovanni writes vividly and we see with her how Damascene supporters of Assad drift away as the brutality of his rule became impossible to deny…Di Giovanni explains to us how horrible it all really is."

Evening Standard - Sam Kiley

"What life is like for ordinary Syrians who have stayed behind is the subject of Janine di Giovanni’s heartbreaking book…[U]nsensational but unsparing…[I]t is individual stories, rather than victims counted in the millions, that reveal the terrible cost of leaving dictators in place for the sake of ‘stability.’ "

Observer - Joan Smith

"Necessary, difficult and elating…[C]lear-eyed and engaged in the best sense—engaged in the human realm rather than the abstractly political."

The Guardian - Robin Yassin-Kassab

"It is crucial to reveal the human stories behind the news—and…Janine di Giovanni does this with heartbreaking eloquence."

Financial Times - Elif Shafak

"This book, haunted by the international failure to intervene effectively, gives readers an on-the-ground experience of the devastating seasons that followed the promise of the Arab Spring." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review

From the Publisher

12/01/2015
An award-winning foreign correspondent who currently serves as Middle East editor of Newsweek, di Giovanni draws on several years' worth of reporting on Syria to show what the fighting there has cost the populace. Originally scheduled for November 2014 as Seven Days in Syria.

Library Journal

Painting a grim picture of the war in Syria, journalist Janine di Giovanni weaves the experiences of common people caught in a war-torn nation. Teri Schnaubelt’s straightforward narration lends credence to the stories, many of which are difficult to hear. Rape, torture, poverty, illness, and starvation are brutal realities for many in Syria. Listening to Schnaubelt describe the atmosphere before people realized how devastating the war would be and then their reactions after the war began to engulf the entire nation is eye-opening. THE MORNING THEY CAME FOR US shows the pain and destruction of the war, and listening to it will make it feel real for the listener. A.G.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2017 - AudioFile

★ 2016-02-18
Newsweek Middle East editor di Giovanni (Ghosts by Daylight: A Modern-Day War Correspondent's Memoir of Love, Loss, and Redemption, 2013) dives headfirst into the nightmarish shadow world of modern Syria. At the beginning, the author relates how a diplomat friend told her "not to start working in Syria. He said it would engulf me as Bosnia had done, and he suggested gently that this was probably not a good thing emotionally. Even so, I went." Throughout the story, di Giovanni's quest seems almost suicidal, but the fruits of her labor are astonishing. She profiles ordinary Syrians struggling to survive while also chronicling her own death-defying journey. Locals guided her through ruined churches, bomb-addled tenements, and dubious border crossings. Even as Western readers have gradually begun to understand the complexities of the Syrian conflict, di Giovanni brings daily life into focus. "What does war sound like?" she asks. "The whistling sound of the bombs falling can only be heard seconds before impact—enough time to know that you are about to die, but not enough time to flee. What does the war in Aleppo smell of? It smells of carbine, of wood smoke, of unwashed bodies, or rubbish rotting, of the heady smell of fear." In her gutsy and sensitive narrative, the author offers the surreal imagery of a place without reason. During her first drive to Damascus, she stopped at a roadside Dunkin' Donuts serving only cheese sandwiches. Later, a physician took a break from his dying patients to play a lonely game of foosball on the hospital roof. Di Giovanni interweaves biblical references and anecdotes about her own motherhood into the story, which may strike some readers as forced or even melodramatic. But the author is a master of war reporting, especially its civilian side. Thanks to her bitter sacrifice, Western readers may begin to appreciate the chaos that Syrian refugees continue to flee. This brilliant, necessary book will hopefully do for Syria what Herr's Dispatches (1977) did for Vietnam.

Kirkus Reviews