"This outstanding book from essayist and author Saldana puts names and faces on several emigrants from Iraq and Syria, emphasizing their distinctiveness....Readers won't soon forget the compelling stories of these brave individuals, revealed so poignantly by Saldana's beautiful writing." Booklist, starred review
"Throughout this compassionate book, the author demonstrates the resilience of refugees, who carry with them their precious languages, cultures, and memories. Memorable personal stories that give much-needed depth and humanity to what are otherwise merely numbers." Kirkus Reviews
"Stephanie Saldaña long ago proved herself a poetic and perceptive essayist. In this book, she also proves herself a courageous one. Following refugees into the darkest and most dangerous spaces of recent history, she documents journeys that are about much more than bare survival, at once wrenching and radiant." Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
"Amid the ashes of war and unimaginable losses in Iraq and Syria, there is beauty, to which Stephanie Saldaña bears witness in this indelible work that should be read widely and deeply." Rubén Degollado, author of The Family Izquierdo
"This compassionate, fiercely humane collection of stories is exquisitely composed, an act of deepest grace. It is a compendium of precious preservation." Naomi Shihab Nye, poet and the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate of the United States, 2019-21
"An emotional and thought-provoking book that provides an insightful, moving, and nuanced portrayal of the refugee experience. I felt each and every word. I was there!" Tareq Hadhad, founder and CEO of Peace by Chocolate
"Beautiful, heartbreaking, and full of lush detail of creation and recreation. A profound journey of listening, of honest witness." Sandy Tolan, author of the international bestseller The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
"Saldaña's gorgeous new book reminds us of the breathtaking individuality of the men, women, and children seeking refuge around the world." James Martin, SJ, bestselling author of Jesus: a Pilgrimage
2023-06-15
A journalist and religion scholar who has traveled widely in the Middle East delivers poignant, humanizing stories of war refugees from Syria and Iraq.
In these stories, gleaned from travels in 2016 and 2017 in Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan, and Greece, Saldaña, the author of A Country Between and The Bread of Angels, uses the theme of what refugees in flight were able to carry with them—often only the clothes on their backs. On Aug. 6, 2014, the Islamic State group invaded an ancient Christian community in Qaraqosh, Iraq, and 44,000 Christians were forced to flee. In Amman, Jordan, where many relocated, the author met a woman named Hana, who described how she and the other women re-created their previous social world, in which the sewing of dresses was an important tradition. “So I learned that objects could speak or elicit a memory,” writes Saldaña. “And I learned that when the places you love begin to disappear, you begin to live in them all the time.” In Istanbul, she tracked down Hozan, a famous Kurdish buzuq player, and his musician friend Ferhad, both from al-Hasakeh, Syria, which was riven by that nation’s civil war. Saldaña also recounts the horrendous conditions in a refugee camp in Greece called Moria, which was designed for 2,300 people but, by 2017, housed more than 7,000. The author’s exploration of Moria is particularly heartbreaking, as she clearly portrays the awful plight of the refugees as well as the unwillingness of many Western countries to assist. Finally, Saldaña traveled to a convent in Germany where a group of Yazidi, “members of a small and highly persecuted religious minority from northern Iraq,” found shelter from the violence of IS. Throughout this compassionate book, the author demonstrates the resilience of refugees, who carry with them their precious languages, cultures, and memories.
Memorable personal stories that give much-needed depth and humanity to what are otherwise merely numbers.